Yeah I know he hasn't conceded. The video in the tweet above is a series of clips from Trump rants in the past, put together in a way that has him giving a concession speech. Totally fake, and totally funny.
I know, only wiki, but is reasonable summary of a complex process for genersl public as a starting place.
They can run hot enough to provide the process heat for coal to liquid fuels too. There is a lot more cosl than oil. Reserve coal for conversion to liquid fuels, and i read somewhere that the ash from the coal contais sufficient thorium to keep the reactor fueld.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
"There are green energy alternatives. However Krumdieck’s argument is New Zealand already uses the technologies with the best EROI returns for its national electricity generation. There are no better ones on the horizon."
One of the great shibboleths of the radical green movement. Nuclear fission power is not only the safest known energy source, it's the most reliable and has EROI's in excess of 50. The development and mass adoption of new generation MSR designs (which is happening very rapidly right now) would permanently transform human economies and enable a dramatic expansion of development everywhere.
Which is why green movement hates them; kind of buggers up their fantasies of everyone living in a de-powered, slowly decaying world of hippie communes and kale farming co-operatives.
"The development and mass adoption of new generation MSR designs (which is happening very rapidly right now) would permanently transform human economies and enable a dramatic expansion of development everywhere."
Something's not quite right about that sentence – if the "mass adoption of new generation MSR designs" "is happening very rapidly right now", then this wouldwill "permanently transform human economies and enable dramatic expansion of development elsewhere" (yadda yadda yadda) on spaceship Earth. That's clearly what 'our' already fouled nest needs – "dramatic expansion and development". Fantastic.
You chose to characterise the Green movement as a bunch of hateful fantasists, but they most likely believe they’re doing they best they can for the environment and a sustainable future.
"There’s little reason to consider thorium, molten salt reactors and Gates’ “traveling wave” TerraPower technology when considering the future of energy. We have solutions today. They may be boring and low-tech, but they are cheap, fast to build, reliable, predictable, and have incredibly low negative externalities. By the time any of these technologies actually see the market, they’ll be like the Christian concept of a god in a world of science, with nowhere to stand and nothing to do.
As a result, CleanTechnica‘s policy will be to continue to ignore them in favor of the actually transformative technologies reshaping our world for the better."
For land-based energy, I have my doubts that small nuclear is going to happen anytime soon. Not because of technical obstacles or genuine safety issues, but because of blinkered perceptions that will create a regulatory barrier that will cost too much to overcome.
But if we ever get serious about going zero emission, there's tens or hundreds of thousands of mobile power stations putting out power 24/7 in the range of 5MW to 100MW, that currently burn the nastiest dirtiest leftovers of the petroleum supply chain. That's a duty cycle exactly suited to a small nuclear plant. I refer to shipping, of course.
So I can easily imagine small nukes will get popularised and achieve economies of scale in shipping applications, then transition to land based uses.
The question will be whether it's done in a sensible thoughtful fashion in nations where citizen well-being and the environment get at least some consideration. Or whether it gets left to nations that simply DGAF, like Russia, China, India …
The possible future and obstacles in the way of a significant source of very low emissions energy don't relate to the post? And don't relate to a thread specifically about that particular energy source?
But if we ever get serious about going zero emission, there's tens or hundreds of thousands of mobile power stations putting out power 24/7 in the range of 5MW to 100MW, that currently burn the nastiest dirtiest leftovers of the petroleum supply chain. That's a duty cycle exactly suited to a small nuclear plant. I refer to shipping, of course.
And to their credit CleanTechnica published in 2012 a rebuttal of that original 2009 article.
In conclusion, Makhijani and Boyd fail to consider the implications of the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor on all aspects relating to the benefits of thorium as a nuclear fuel. They fail to consider its strong benefits with regards to nuclear proliferation, since no operational nuclear weapon has ever been fabricated from thorium or uranium-233. They fail to consider how LFTR can be used to productively consume nuclear weapons material made excess by the end of the Cold War. They fail to consider the reduction in nuclear waste that would accompany the use of LFTR. They fail entirely to account for the safety features inherent in a LFTR—how low-pressure operation and a chemically-stable fuel form allow the reactor to have a passive safety response to severe accidents. They fail to account for the improvement in cost that would be realized if LFTRs were to efficiently use thorium, reduce the need for mining fossil fuels, and increase the availability of energy.
I get a daily news feed from CleanTechnica and it's obvious they've hitched their bandwagon to the SWB concept. What they fail to mention is that none of the technology necessary to make this 100% real exists yet, so while progress is good, the full rollout is not happening any sooner than next gen nuclear.
And that the only places that have seriously embraced SWB, such as Germany, have seen electricity prices (and net CO2) rise dramatically. I'm not particularly interested in throwing stones at solar renewables, they are clearly part of the solution and I've no problem with driving innovation in this field to see where it takes us. Who knows it could be the winner.
But then this still unsurpassed presentation from the late David McKay explains the limitations very clearly.
Everyone in the MSR/Thorium field says that the single largest hurdle has been the insane over-regulation of nuclear systems. Instead of requiring proscribed safety outcomes, entities like the NRC detailed specific designs and methods specific to the LWR reactors of the day. That had the effect of dramatically stifling innovation because until investors could see the possibility of the regulators permitted new systems, no-one was willing to put up the cash needed to fully engineer pilot plants.
Yes until about the early 90's nuclear energy was fully competitive on price, but in response largely to Three Mile Island and wildly over exaggerated claims of risk, layers of prescriptive regulation were added on to the industry.
Unfortunately while these merely added huge costs, they did nothing to address the limitations of the fundamental reactor designs of the day. Indeed worse still they effectively locked the industry into one possible version of 'how to do a reactor' while shutting out from development any of the other approximately 1000 other possible ways to do it.
It was the insane over-reaction and fear mongering by the nuttier segments of the green movement (eg Helen Caldicott) that drove much of the political pressure.
And the regulators, being ultimately political creatures themselves, had to bow to the directions of their masters.
It's widely recognised nowadays that safety regulators of all kinds, are generally much better advised on detailing methods of evaluating hazard, setting the required outcomes and monitoring regimes, rather than proscribing detailed methods that lock an industry into rapidly dating technology.
@RL (8:51 pm) – Dr Caldicott no doubt holds her beliefs at least as dear as you do yours. According to Wikipedia she was a talented clinician, as well as a real dynamo in the anti-nuclear movement.
Would she tolerate the "fear mongering" and "insane over-reaction" labels, do you think, recognising your belittling "nutty segment" pigeonholing for what it is?
Great that safety regulators are improving – seems to be working, and they certainly have a lot on their plates. One down…
I've listened to some of Caldicott's anti nuclear presentations on YT many years back, and it was realising that she was just making shit up that I started to question the standard fear based narrative around nuclear power that I had uncritically swallowed up until then.
As it happens I worked for about seven years in the 80's with Kr-85 beta sources used in the paper industry to measure sheet density. So while I cannot claim to be a nuclear engineer, between Physics 101 and some real life experience with radiation sources, Caldicott started triggering my bullshit detector. As it happens I'm not the only one.
Once upon a time she had a wide audience, but frankly these days she's widely regarded as an extremist nutter with a radical agenda. The anti-nuclear movement's Lord Monckton if you will.
As for that list of incidents, note carefully the death toll given. In all but a handful of the death toll is zero.
The big three incidents are Three Mile Island (precisely the accident scenario Alvin Weinberg had warned about a decade earlier), Chernobyl a design that would never have been licensed anywhere outside of the Soviet Union, and Fukushima. The direct death toll between all three is less than 100, the indirect toll less than 10,000. (And I’m being generous here.)
And keep in mind I'm explicitly not advocating for any more of these obsolete reactor designs that are essentially refugees from the dawn of the nuclear age back in the 40's.
Now compare the hysteria generated over this hazard with this. You read that correctly 10,000 deaths per fucking day.
"Once upon a time she had a wide audience, but frankly these days she's widely regarded as an extremist nutter with a radical agenda. The anti-nuclear movement's Lord Monckton if you will."
Helen Caldicott speaks at the conclusion of her symposium “The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction” 3/1/2015 New York Academy of Medicine. Caldicott has been warning of the dangers of nuclear war and nuclear radiation for decades. She is a Gandhi Peace Prize winner. Her website is: http://helencaldicottfoundation.org/ https://youtu.be/iCRc0OyuIvY
"10,000 deaths per fucking day" – not quite that bad, but still awful.
Relative Risk Functions for Estimating Excess Mortality Attributable to Outdoor PM2.5 Air Pollution: Evolution and State-of-the-Art https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/6/589/htm
In the case of Caldicott I'm quite happy to call it as I see it. Far from 'telling the truth' she's been caught out spouting arrant, alarmist nonsense over and over. The two links I provided above are just a small sample, no serious person can be bothered tracking it all down. Hell even I could spot the crap just based on my own rudimentary experience.
(As an mildly interesting aside, the same 8 years in the paper industry also taught me the fundamentals of IR absorption, which was the method we used to measure moisture content in lightweight sheets. Oddly enough this same experience meant that climate change skeptics also triggered the same response with their own bullshit science. It's one thing to judge a claim when it's based on a theoretical understanding only, quite another when you've worked with the tools every day for years.)
As for the speech you linked to, Caldicott's characterisation of humanity as 'a disease infecting the planet' is a deeply vile, truly hateful, anti-human ideology that I profoundly and vehemently reject. This is what I meant by an "extremist nutter with a radical agenda".
Still Gordon McDowell (who has been closely involved in this story for well over a decade and is an exceptionally well informed lay person) did put this video together back on 2014. OK so it's nearly 2 hrs long, but if I can sit through it and learn something, then what's stopping you if you really do care about the future?
"10,000 deaths per fucking day" – maybe not quite that bad, but still awful.
Yes, even if that figure is too high by a factor of 10 (let me be really generous) it's still massively higher than any harm ever done by nuclear energy. Yet hardly anyone gives a shit. Not one little bit.
From this I conclude that the hysteria over the potential harms from nuclear energy are nothing more than an irrational folly. And Caldicott is one of the worst fear-mongering liars of the lot.
You know, it's funny – I listened to that Caldicott YouTube video and heard an intelligent, warm and caring 76-year old; very human/humane, and she seems to have been highly regarded.
Then I reread what you'd written about her, and tbh I couldn't detect those qualities in your comments. Your opinions seemed ott and off.
"insane over-reaction and fear mongering by the nuttier segments of the green movement"
"she was just making shit up"
"Caldicott started triggering my bullshit detector"
"she's widely regarded as an extremist nutter with a radical agenda. The anti-nuclear movement's Lord Monckton if you will."
"Far from 'telling the truth' she's been caught out spouting arrant, alarmist nonsense over and over."
"Hell even I could spot the crap just based on my own rudimentary experience."
“Caldicott is one of the worst fear-mongering liars of the lot.”
"Caldicott's characterisation of humanity as 'a disease infecting the planet' is a deeply vile, truly hateful, anti-human ideology that I profoundly and vehemently reject. This is what I meant by an "extremist nutter with a radical agenda"."
Can you please provide some evidence that Caldicott characterised humanity as "a disease infecting the planet" – honestly find that hard to believe because it seems so out of character with what little I've learned about her. You wouldn't invent such a vile slur just because you despise Caldicott and all she stands for, would you? But that's how it starts, and pretty soon you're "just making shit up".
Can you please provide some evidence that Caldicott characterised humanity as "a disease infecting the planet" –
At exactly 2:41 in your linked video she asks "what is the disease infecting the planet" … and then goes on to clearly finger humanity, men in particular, as that disease.
As for her flat out lies, I've already provided the links detailing some of them. If you don't know much about nuclear science then she's very smooth and convincing. Like all true cons, she has the sincerity faked down to perfection.
OK, so Caldicott said/asked (@2.41 minutes): "So what, what is the disease now infecting the planet? And who is or are responsible?"
Well, we've heard a lot about that today and yesterday, and there are many aspects and facets of the pathology which are so obvious to everyone. I [pr], I've never really understood why men kill. When I was a little girl I asked my father "But why do men rape women when they conquer a territory, 'cause the women have had nothing to do with it." I, he didn't know – my father was a wonderful man.
Um, I think a lot about nationalism and tribalism and patriotism. I was here, I flew in to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the night before 9/11 happened. I woke up in the morning to see the planes going to the World Trade Towers. I was to give a lecture that night to several thousand students, and as I was walking across the campus to have a swim one woman approached me and she said "Do you believe in Jesus?" And I said "No, I'm an atheist, and I'm a pantheist." And she said, she said "You will go to Hell" – like she psychologically hit me in the face. And I thought 'this is a strange place.'
And it turned out that they were very Christian on this campus. So I thought 'what am I going to say to these students tonight?' And they filed in ashen-faced, just white-faced; shocked. And so I got out Luke, and I read to them what Jesus said: "Love thine enemies and do good to those who hate you." And then I hoped and hoped that America would not seek vengeance."
What I heard was an expression of (IMHO rational) concern about some aspects of human psychology and behaviour – the idea that Caldicott is characterising humanity as "a disease infecting the planet" just doesn't compute. Maybe we each see/hear what we want to see/hear, or "We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are."
Long-time nuclear waste warning messages are intended to deter human intrusion at nuclear waste repositories in the far future, within or above the order of magnitude of 10,000 years.
Due to the timescales involved when handling nuclear waste, designing deep geological repositories like WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant ) is one of the most challenging engineering problems ever faced by our species. But, as it turns out, the main problem has less to do with engineering, and more to do with linguistics: namely, how to design a warning message about the repository that will be intelligible to future generations of humans who might happen across it hundreds of thousands of years from now.
Some of the newest generation design would use this waste as fuel.
The old designs that are used in currently operating nukes extract less than 1% of the available energy in the fuel going in. That's wasteful of the fuel, as well as creating the hazardous waste disposal problem. Then what does come out the end that's no longer useful as fuel has much shorter half-lives that its hazardous.
It's a common misconception that a very long half life is inherently more dangerous. Actually it's the exact opposite. All other aspects being equal, it's the fissile isotopes with the very short half lives that are more dangerous to be around.
But otherwise Andre is right, the problem with the old solid fuel LWR reactors is that in order to protect the mechanical integrity of the fuel rods, they have to be removed when less than 1% of the U-235 is consumed. Which creates an unfortunately large volume of waste, and that's the real problem.
Reactors where the fuel is molten simply do not have this problem, and can be designed to consume pretty much any percentage of the fissile material you want, thus dramatically reducing the volume of waste.
Better still you have much more opportunity to post-process the fuel when it's in liquid form than when it's solid. This means that not only are you dealing with much smaller volumes, you have more control over exactly what isotopes are in the waste stream.
It's still not something to be treated lightly, but the problem is a far more reasonable one.
Regardless of whether you are for or against nuclear power, and no matter what you think of nuclear weapons, the radioactive waste is already here, and we have to deal with it.
All these wastes can remain dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years. For that reason, they must be disposed of permanently, experts say. About a dozen countries, including Finland, Switzerland, and other European nations, are planning deep geological repositories for their nuclear waste. In the US, government officials have proposed storing the country’s waste in a repository beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The site lies about 300 m below ground level and 300 m above the water table. But the Yucca Mountain site has gone in and out of favor with changes in the US’s leadership. For now, waste accumulates mainly where it’s generated—at the power plants and processing facilities. Some of it has been sitting in interim storage since the 1940s.
Two people with strong engineering backgrounds have outlined that the information you are posting is misleading.
The new generation of molten salt reactors being developed will happily munch up this old solid fuel reactor waste as fuel. If you really are worried about this problem, then you should be strongly advocating for a new technology that will solve the problem.
However it's going to require more 'socialism' than you're personally comfortable with:
The problem for developers of Generation IV nuclear power plants in western industrialized countries is that it may still be too early in the development process for investors and potential customers to bet significant money on the winners from an increasingly crowded field.
…
If the U.S., UK, France, Japan and and other nations with market economies that have championed the Gen IV designs want to catch up to these kinds of accomplishments in Russia and China, their governments will have to radically reconsider the levels of funding they are willing to commit to achieve these results.
Private sector investors can neither support this kind of funding alone nor take on the risks of failure associated with building first of a kind Gen IV reactors. Partnership with national nuclear energy laboratories are crucial and must focus on kicking working prototypes out the door to be further developed with commercial partners.
However it's going to require more 'socialism' than you're personally comfortable with:
Not quite sure how you reach that conclusion. The ORNL MSR-E research reactor that I've frequently referenced was of course a 100% govt funded program. I fully agree it would never have been funded from the private sector.
Sadly being a govt funded program, it was also vulnerable to the whims of corrupt and ignorant politicians who pulled the funding because they wanted it to go to another pork barrel exercise elsewhere. (That turned out to be a technical dead end and a monumental waste of money.) So there's that aspect of 'socialism' to consider as well.
But virtually all of the recent progress in the field has been govt funded one way or another, and this is all a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The usual pattern is that govts take the risk on developing the early fundamentals, while the private sector is better at optimising the designs, and the mass rollout production phase.
Frankel's article on first scan reads very well and is consistent with all the other information I've encountered. Yes there are risks, but he goes into considerable detail on the various approaches currently being pursued. (My personal favourite, the MSR being only one of them.)
They are, of course, using hyperbole to get across what they want without actually saying it which is the removal of regulations.
What's needed is an update of regulations taking into account the knowledge gained on the subject over the last few decades.
This applies to all legislation all of the time but industry doesn't like regulation at all which is why we keep hearing the BS about getting rid of the red tape.
And if you're going to demand a citation, you engage with the data and the argument. You don't get to dismiss it just because you don't like what it says.
" Nuclear fission power is not only the safest known energy source, it's the most reliable and has EROI's in excess of 50. The development and mass adoption of new generation MSR designs (which is happening very rapidly right now) would permanently transform human economies and enable a dramatic expansion of development everywhere. "
Excited by this, I looked to corroborate the numbers. Looking on Wikipedia, I found these numbers from a study by Murphy and Hall (2010):
Hmm, that's not so good. Nuclear is listed at "5 to 15" in the data, meaning from 5:1 to 15:1.
Digging a bit further, I found that the literature is very divided on the EROI of nuclear, listing it at anywhere from 1:1 (i.e., uneconomical at any price) to 90:1 (i.e., the most bountiful energy source in history).
EROEI is calculated by dividing the energy output by the energy input. Measuring total energy output is often easy, especially in the case for an electrical output where some appropriate electricity meter can be used. However, researchers disagree on how to determine energy input accurately and therefore arrive at different numbers for the same source of energy.
Basically it depends a bit on the life cycle you allocate to the plant, but they give EROI's of 59 and 70. Much of it goes into the plant construction and decommissioning.
And MSR's require far less steel and concrete and are much easier to decommission. They have physical footprints maybe less than 10% of the existing LWR designs, which directly correlates to that much less steel and concrete.
So the EROI I suggested of 50 is way conservative.
And I'm sure that the study quoted was done by reputable scientists who didn't have an industry bias.
The question of which to believe comes down to the actions of those in industry over the last few decades that have proven such sources to be less than reliable.
Well in that case I reject any and all sources you may care to provide on the grounds that you've selected only the ones that suit your negative argument.
And which ever way you care to cut it, quoting sources that only relate to an obsolete technology version that I’m NOT advocating for is entirely irrelevant anyway.
Well in that case I reject any and all sources you may care to provide on the grounds that you've selected only the ones that suit your negative argument.
You way of mentioning reputable industry experts was your way of dismissing the scientific report that you didn't like
You know as well as I do that its impossible to prove a negative
And industry really has done itself no favours over the decades as research that it provided to advocate for its position has been proved faulty and biased (just one example)
quoting sources that only relate to an obsolete technology version that I’m NOT advocating for is entirely irrelevant anyway.
2010 wasn't all that long ago and its difficult to quote numbers that don't exist.
To me the big problem of nuclear power is still the waste.
I still oppose it in NZ as building nuclear power reactors on the Ring of Fire is contra-indicated no matter how safe that they can be built – we have to work on the fact that nature can bypass that safety.
So, small nuclear reactors powering ships and producing minimal waste.
Well I've taken something of an interest in this topic for some years now, and over time you get a sense of who is reliable, and world-nuclear org is one of the most sober ones out there. These people are real world engineering association and they aren't in the business of putting up fake information that can be easily discredited.
As for the waste problem; well as I said above, if you really are serious about this then you should strongly welcome the new generation of MSR's that can readily use existing waste stockpiles as fuel.
As for whether this new generation of reactors should be used in NZ, I'm reasonably agnostic. Like Australia our solar renewable potential is pretty good, and it's quite achieveable for NZ to get to 100% electricity without nuclear.
On the other hand it's not helpful to overstate the engineering risks; keep in mind that even in very large earthquakes industrial plant actually performs really well from a structural safety point of view. A massive volcano that consumes the plant might be a possibility, but in that case I think you'd have bigger problems to worry about. Unlike all existing reactors, all the new generation designs are explicitly designed to be 'walk away safe' in all rational scenarios.
Most of the problems people are having here is that they're projecting poorly understood mis-information that simply isn't relevant to the technology I'm talking about. It's like worrying about air pollution from an electric car.
"Final Notice" was the subject line of the email sent to Kristine Ablinger just before 1pm on a Monday afternoon. It was from her flatmate who owned a three-bedroom house in Auckland's Birkenhead. Kristine rented a small room with a little balcony and a sliver of a sea view. The room felt perfect – cosy and private. A space of Kristine's own, where she would be safe when she began taking hormones.
However, there was no greeting in the body of the message from her flatmate.
"I think you need to know that William told me that you felt that you had found a safe place to transition and I have to say that this is a BIG issue," it began. "So without being offensive … I need to honestly let you know that although I don't have issues with transexual transgender etc, in general, I don't want any part of that in my house [sic]." …
"I am not your mother and I do not need to be involved in this kind of thing, which is not something I believe in at all", it continued. "I have tried to tolerate it and be supportive because I realise that this is you and who you are. Unfortunately, I don't like it at all. I find it extremely offensive."
How can this be in NZ – or anywhere? Such short term notice? For not doing anything harmful to the property or the landlord. What is our human rights legislation for but to provide practical backing to us so we can be treated fairly!
Also what a hypocritical load of BS – "I need to honestly let you know that although I don't have issues with transexual transgender etc, in general, I don't want any part of that in my house [sic]." The point here is that the landlord does have issues with it, and doesn't want to be involved closely with someone going through a sex change in their house. So stating that is their right. And this person has a room only and presumably would share all other facilities. But throwing out this otherwise perfectly okay tenant at the drop of a hat is extreme and there should be a mandatory period of one month notice with no withdrawal of facilities or freedom. That would be showing respect for both parties' views. The landlord should not be allowed to be so arbitrary.
There is an important point at the bottom of all this. Some thoughts from experience. Don't tell all about yourself on-line, to anybody and everybody and particularly – anyone who has power to deny you something, take something away from you. Don't lie to people, tell them honestly the minimum of what they require, but don't burble your personal life and thoughts. You never know from looking at people and from short conversations with them, what rules their minds, hearts and souls. You will find out eventually by thinking about what they say, and taking note of what they do. The person behind the facade may surprise you; there will be another side to them, propensities which you will define good or bad depending on your own.
I cannot see what the rush was for the owner to ask the flatmate to leave in 3 hours. I was aware that without a contract a flatmate can be asked to leave with next to no notice which is unreasonable. There is a process for an eviction but not for a flatmate without a contract. Even if not disclosing transitioning this could have happened to Kristen.
People who have fought for the right to not be discriminated against are still being discriminated against and this needs to be looked into.
David Cunliffe slams Auckland Council's $1.4b paper losses as 'incompetent'- Whist PR can spin this as a paper loss – There is also a real term consequence in that council is paying interest costs higher than would be if paying the floating rate – So more rate income is directed to interest than with hind sight would be.
In treasury depts I have been involved in only a portion of the debt would have such a mechanism attached and there would be varying tenures of time e.g. 1,3,5 year terms
“RCEP”-Oh well, there goes any chance of stopping raw log exports to build houses in NZ!
NZ would be far better off as an independent, non aligned nation, doing mutually advantageous bilateral trade deals.
But of course we have 5 Eyes standing on our throat, and international finance capital in the form of Australian banks.
RCEP seems to be opposed by some as it chops the yanks out and may aid China. Well tough, Trump’s US effectively chopped NZ out. Global trade agreements are usually bad news for small and non imperialist countries, so Labour has made another serious blunder (or great move no doubt if you are of the Blairite persuasion).
China not in the RCEP and India did not sign. News at 1pm that Covid found on NZ export of frozen meat to China. Not sure of the source of contact or how trade with China could be affected.
NZ might get a good trade deal with the UK. I would be wary of trade with the EU as the UK left the EU.
Can we stop this experiment with our society and not monetise parenting any longer? Parenting is derided, with jaundiced views, and the action is in replacing it with farming children, with vague notions of kibbutzes and that they worked well? They began in a different time and a different society which had ties and shared values. Here government tears down values, such as parent-run, whanau-run kindergartens and makes it hard for the parents to continue often with excessive demands for improved conditions appropriate for businesses looking for profit.
A thousand early childhood teachers have so little confidence in the early learning centres they work in that they wouldn't send their own children there.
What modern women's dream was – the opportunity to have a career, take time out to bring up their small number of children, and then have a satisfying working life in the community. They would work hard at both jobs, but the parenting was important. It would be nice to have two parents involved in bringing up the family, but single or solo parents would also follow this pattern. What they needed was to keep involved in training, and be able to boost their small income on top of a reasonable benefit, and it would be good if their regular workshops with speakers, and a sort of club so that single parents could get to know each other, and be advised what help was available.
Instead mothers were allowed to work which was not so accepted mid century, but as time went on and the single parent numbers grew, they were forced out to work, the children left in some sort of care, and the training and skills part was withdrawn. The healthy program was gutted, and now it's a bare bones approach and society shows it in many ways. The good thinkers need to come to the fore and restore the parents to a high priority, winning spot; perhaps the deadheads could regard it as a sport, seeing that is all that some people seem to care about supporting.
Childcare centres have a lot in common with rest homes, it is about the profit and not the care of those in the centre.
Qualified ECE teachers are underpaid compared to kindergarten teachers. Primary care nurses (GP and rest homes) are underpaid compared to DHB nurses. Rest home workers and some ECE employees are under skilled for the work they do.
If parents want to own a home they both need to work, not like 20 years ago when homes were affordable.
So right, Treetop, although there are exceptions (not nearly enough!). As an ece lecturer (recently retired) I have spent time in centres I wouldn't let the hotel cat into, let alonr a child! They have become businesses rather than centres of education under the profit-making private ownership model and we have gone from being an internationally respected ece country with our amazing bi-cultural curriculum and our high standard of teacher training to a shameful embarrassment as quality was able to slide furthet and furthrr down the scale in the interests of profit. Add to that the fact that the choice to work for women became a necessity as the price of living became too much, in most cases, for the single earner to bear and you have a recipe for near disaster!
Oddly enough I'm not particularly interested in banging on about MSR's and nuclear energy at great length here. It's pertinent to the OP, but tangential, and I've been over this ground before.
The core argument of the OP is focussed on how we might re-order our energy and economic systems to take better account of the both human and planetary health. The default 'greenie' approach to this challenge is 'de-power' and transition to something different. (And some more extreme activists demand 'die-off' as well.)
This is all well and good, except we should take note that some 85% of the world's population pretty much live like this already. It's a condition generally called 'poverty' and if you ask the people doing it, they mostly would prefer something better.
Now that 'something better' absolutely does not have to be emulating the inefficiencies of the developed world, and especially not the USA. They have every opportunity to leap frog the developmental stages we went through, and go directly to systems that are truly better than what we are doing at present.
And that is a much more interesting and challenging question than merely 'de-powering'.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
My understanding of the 'de-powering' strategy is not the same as yours – it encompasses the very challenging consequences of "shutting things down".
Who is “we”?
We should learn from the low-energy societies and experiments within today’s societies, but those good examples don’t offer a program for moving from the current state of most of the planet (high-energy, unsustainable) to where we need to be (low-energy, sustainable). Because no one can imagine what such a program would look like, people are quick to embrace a “technological fundamentalism” that pretends we can continue at high-energy levels through some magical combination of innovation and renewable energy, which are important but cannot keep the contemporary world afloat.
————
The “we” is us, Homo sapiens, the primate with the big brain. The first farmers, the first smelters of ore, the first people who tapped fossil fuels to do work in machines—all of them contributed to the mess we are in, but without knowledge of the consequences of their actions. We can say of those early carbon-seekers, “Forgive them, for they know not what they did” (Luke 23:34).
Today, we know what we do. The question is, can we—all of us—face what lies ahead without diversion and without illusion?"
Because no one can imagine what such a program would look like,
That's because the idea that you can somehow de-power and economy back to pre-industrial levels, and somehow retain all the material benefits of an high energy industrial economy … is pure magical thinking.
The idea that ‘we‘ could “somehow retain all the material benefits of an high energy industrial economy” is indeed “pure magical thinking” – one would have to be in the grip of a debilitating delusion to assert such a thing.
There are a number of different approaches to the engineering and delivery of next gen MSR's. Thorcon have adopted a very straightforward methodology that, barring unforeseen political problems, could easily deliver real machines by 2030.
Just three years ago the progress we've made even to this moment, seemed highly unlikely.
Keep in mind the basics of all this were done and dusted back in the 60's. If only fucking Nixon hadn't cancelled the program, the chances are we'd not be having this conversation about climate change at all.
The MSR-E program at ORNL was an outstanding technical success for a purely experimental program. It ran for over four years with absolutely no hazardous incidents.
There is nothing 'scifi' ; about any of this at all. With their inherently much better safety profile, and much lower construction costs there is every reason to suppose that a successful MSR nuclear power program could have evolved during the 70's and 80's, eventually dominating the electricity generation industry and more. In such a scenario coal would have been on the phase out by 2000 at the latest, and most of the accumulated fossil carbon would never have happened.
Good points..and an example of that leap-frogging has already happened..with telephone systems in africa..they went from none to mobile..leap-frogging the poles/lines etc in the developed world..(assenting 'greenie' here…much of what the green-movement does/aspires to…is just pissing about the edges of the actual problems..the examples are legion..)
Let's just assume for the sake of argument that we have cheap, abundant, fossil carbon free energy. I don't care how, let's just go with this pre-supposition. Let's go one step further and go with the idea that effectively unlimited energy would allow us to recycle 95% or more resources, metals, fresh water and so on.
Now start to think about how the entire world, because this is a problem we solve globally or not at all, would look like if we did this.
There are two ways this can go, in a model predicated on the ancient 'growth at all costs' driver, motivated primarily by competition and sexual selection, then it's easy to imagine the outcome as something like the current US on steroids. Only everywhere.
On the other hand as the world develops the population pyramids invert, and we get more older adults everywhere than younger ones. Older people have different priorities as a rule, they're more interested in investing (in the broadest sense of the word) and incomes to sustain them through old age. And we're right on the cusp of making this massive transition right now, in these first few years of this decade.
And it's a trend that will only become more entrenched as this century progresses. This changes everything. We've never been here before, and none of our economic systems have encountered anything like this. Now we could go all gloomy and doomy over this; but in terms of the problem the OP poses, it's actually a remarkable synchronicity, as societies develop, they generally get older and seek more sustainable lifestyles.
Here's my big picture; in order to get to the destination we all want, healthy societies in a sustainable balance with a healthy planet, I'm arguing we need to extend the process of human development everywhere as fast as possible. (And this of course is only possible given the pre-suppositions of my first para.)
So if we really want to do this, how does this look politically?
my animosity today is fairly evenly spread. If people want to have side conversations sparked by my post, I'm completely ok with this. Where they're off topic they belong in Open Mike.
But seriously…as a labour party loyalist..how are you feeling about what the leaders have said so far…and how much transformation do you think we can expect during the rest of this term of government..?..and in what areas in particular..?
Powerdown isn't de-power (whatever that is). Powerdown is also, specifically, not about inducing society-wide poverty, and it's not about living like the poorest people in the world. I even put references in the post.
I've got little patience these days for people (not just you) using my posts to run their hobby horse arguments. If you want to ignore the basic premises and purpose of the post, then please use Open Mike.
And just today we ordered a copy of Holmgren's book RetroSuburbia: the downshifter’s guide to a resilient future. A$85 as it happens.
You constantly misread my intent, and I can only conclude personal malice is the reason.
Because while everything Susan Krumdieck is talking about is well and good, and truly I'm not throwing rocks at he motivations … we also have to be aware of the limitations she does not address. Most because the lifestyle changes she is talking about are still only possible when they're embedded in a larger industrial society.
To give a crude example, people will still want to have access to fully modern medical systems. No-one for instance is going to tolerate a return to infant mortality rates that saw fully 50% of children die before the age of five. (And this was a reality in even my own family just four generations prior to myself.)
@weka..do you consider stopping farming/eating animals…given the size of that global-footprint..(not to mention all the soy etc grown to feed them…fuel to transport around the globe)..do you regard that change as falling within the scope of yr posted topic..?
Powering down would see local food as a priority, and regenag, rather than veganism. No need to feed animals soy, or for a country like NZ to import animal products from places that do.
What animal welfare issues? As you already know I am not against killing animals for meat and that I place a high priority on animal husbandry that lessens suffering (eg basically an end to industrial dairying, and instead growing dairy products ethically and regeneratively for local consumption, as well as export for countries in need).
'what animal welfare issues'..(!)..seriously..?..and IMHO there is no way animal slavery/killing/eating …with all the horrors inherent..is/can be 'ethical'…no matter how you package the rotting carcass..and no mention of that very large environmental footprint in yr list of things to do..?..I can't see any reason for that..
I'll pass on doing a primer for you on the animal welfare issues inherent in farming of animals…save to note that the worst things are done to female animals..from the serial-pregnancies.short/brutish life of the farmed/milked cow..to the oscenities of the farrowing crates female pigs are confined in..female chooks etc in harrowing conditions…I would submit that animal slavery is also a feminist issue..
Greg Presland and David Cunliffe are having a crack at Auckland Council's Treasury locking in debt at far higher rates than the current market… effectively foregoing $1.4 billion of funding that would have been available if they'd put it on shorter contracts and gained from lower rates.
So the nation stops @ 4 pm to hear j.ardern going into great detail on what she is doing for the upcoming week..(!)..w.t.f. was that all about..?..I think a lot of us couldn’t care less about what she is doing day by day…we just want her to do what she promised she would do..
Not going to happen, unless significantly pressured into it. I don’t begrudge anyone feeling grateful for Jacinda and Robbo’s Govt., for a few brief weeks in Level 4 lockdown, putting people before capital. But it is past time to push back. Including recovering some of the billions ladled out to employers whether they needed it or not, and like CHH and Fletchers still stole workers annual leave, and did not pass on the full bailout amounts.
Which brings me to the 60 NGOs that wrote the PM a letter suggesting benefits be raised. Those organisations, and the people they serve and represent, could perhaps become an extra Parliamentary opposition, an Alliance for community organisation with a focus on action.
All those new Labour MPs should have their Electorate Offices regularly picketed and visited. No Labour Minister should appear anywhere without placards and a group, large or small, reminding them of what they have not done for the NZ working class and underclass, and what they have done for corporates, SMEs, tin pot small business operators, rentiers, speculators, landlords, and property owning middle classes.
Yes the Inquisition must be unrelenting. We are past the comfy chair for recalcitrant Labourites. I think I asked who the old guard would be who would be nicely managing and navigating the Good Ship Lollipop around the reefs of actual breakthrough so no holes get in the hull before the next election. I probably didn't get an answer last time – but a list of the likely suspects would be interesting.
A litmus test for politicians to find out who is pregnant with valuable ideas that could be delivered before mid-year 2121 and who is sterile would be handy!
Did you hear it..?..if so you could not have missed the opening being the contents of her appointment diary for the next week..(!)..and it was well signaled that the press conference was about mask wearing..not about closedown…did you hear it..?
It's the post-Cabinet press conference and it's been the custom for every PM, for decades. Including her upcoming schedule.
The nation doesn't "stop at 4 pm". And I note you commented at 4.12 pm, when Hipkins and Ardern were still speaking, which was followed by half an hour of them taking reporters' questions on a range of topics – as usual. And the news was pretty important.
A reminder: no MPs have been sworn in. Parliament has not started. Next week the government will set out its programme ("speech from the throne").
Again, standard procedure. Have attention spans diminished so far that we've become sugar-filled kids in the back seat … "are we there yet?".
Seeing as the 'there's were promised to us before the first term of this government…our impatience @ non-delivery/broken promises can hardly be accused of being premature..and will she deliver in this ‘programme’..?..or will it be yet another exercise in neoliberal incrementalism..?..with a sauce of delayed gratification of any of the measly offers that tattered ideology serves up..
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
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There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
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TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
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History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
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TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
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This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
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Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
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A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
Opinion: New Health NZ commissioner Lester Levy is authorised to assume operational leadership – chief executive Margie Apa is effectively relegated to his operational deputy The post All-powerful Levy is feudal baron of a $28b fiefdom appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Freedom….to screw the Planet
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/430673/northern-india-chokes-on-toxic-smog-day-after-diwali-festival
morons
Trump concedes – sort of 😉
https://twitter.com/feministabulous/status/1327659656135655425
I heard he tweeted Biden won a rigged election.
I have come to the conclusion that Trump is experimenting on the US population by not having a lockdown.
The sooner the transition begins to get rid of Trump the sooner a plan to control the pandemic can begin.
Trump has a short term memory problem is that why he behaves the way he does?
He won because the election was rigged is the tweet.
Yeah I know he hasn't conceded. The video in the tweet above is a series of clips from Trump rants in the past, put together in a way that has him giving a concession speech. Totally fake, and totally funny.
When it comes to a concession speech from Trump it is going to be ungracious and vindictive. Then again he may not give a concession speech.
I don't expect him to either. It's a very dangerous game he is playing, and his enablers, the GOP, will have a lot to answer for in the future.
Meanwhile in Kenya, they are having some fun at the US's expense:
https://twitter.com/gathara/status/1326386701812555777
No mention anywhere of thorium fueled nuclear. Conventional uranium reactors are a bad idea. The waste is a bit of a problem
https://greentumble.com/7-reasons-why-nuclear-waste-is-dangerous/
Vs Thorium molten salt
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
I know, only wiki, but is reasonable summary of a complex process for genersl public as a starting place.
They can run hot enough to provide the process heat for coal to liquid fuels too. There is a lot more cosl than oil. Reserve coal for conversion to liquid fuels, and i read somewhere that the ash from the coal contais sufficient thorium to keep the reactor fueld.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
"There are green energy alternatives. However Krumdieck’s argument is New Zealand already uses the technologies with the best EROI returns for its national electricity generation. There are no better ones on the horizon."
thanks Pat for keeping on topic.
No mention anywhere of thorium fueled nuclear.
One of the great shibboleths of the radical green movement. Nuclear fission power is not only the safest known energy source, it's the most reliable and has EROI's in excess of 50. The development and mass adoption of new generation MSR designs (which is happening very rapidly right now) would permanently transform human economies and enable a dramatic expansion of development everywhere.
Which is why green movement hates them; kind of buggers up their fantasies of everyone living in a de-powered, slowly decaying world of hippie communes and kale farming co-operatives.
Something's not quite right about that sentence – if the "mass adoption of new generation MSR designs" "is happening very rapidly right now", then this
wouldwill "permanently transform human economies and enable dramatic expansion of development elsewhere" (yadda yadda yadda) on spaceship Earth. That's clearly what 'our' already fouled nest needs – "dramatic expansion and development". Fantastic.You chose to characterise the Green movement as a bunch of hateful fantasists, but they most likely believe they’re doing they best they can for the environment and a sustainable future.
Yup, the grammar was a tad mangled.
Progress on the development side has absolutely taken off in the past four years.
As for the adoption/rollout phase, I can foresee that getting underway before 2030.
Hope all your dreams come true.
https://miningwatch.ca/news/2020/10/20/groups-say-federal-funding-new-nuclear-reactors-dirty-dangerous-distraction-tackling
[PDF link] http://elizabethmaymp.ca/wp-content/uploads/SMRs-Ministers-ORegan-and-Bains_GreenCaucusNov20201.pdf
For land-based energy, I have my doubts that small nuclear is going to happen anytime soon. Not because of technical obstacles or genuine safety issues, but because of blinkered perceptions that will create a regulatory barrier that will cost too much to overcome.
But if we ever get serious about going zero emission, there's tens or hundreds of thousands of mobile power stations putting out power 24/7 in the range of 5MW to 100MW, that currently burn the nastiest dirtiest leftovers of the petroleum supply chain. That's a duty cycle exactly suited to a small nuclear plant. I refer to shipping, of course.
So I can easily imagine small nukes will get popularised and achieve economies of scale in shipping applications, then transition to land based uses.
The question will be whether it's done in a sensible thoughtful fashion in nations where citizen well-being and the environment get at least some consideration. Or whether it gets left to nations that simply DGAF, like Russia, China, India …
What does that have to do with the post?
The possible future and obstacles in the way of a significant source of very low emissions energy don't relate to the post? And don't relate to a thread specifically about that particular energy source?
run it through an actual sustainability lens. And a powerdown one.
Maybe something to do with the paras 2 – 6 of the OP?
Fully support shipping going nuclear.
And to their credit CleanTechnica published in 2012 a rebuttal of that original 2009 article.
https://cleantechnica.com/2012/09/12/rebuttals-to-paper-criticizing-thorium/
I get a daily news feed from CleanTechnica and it's obvious they've hitched their bandwagon to the SWB concept. What they fail to mention is that none of the technology necessary to make this 100% real exists yet, so while progress is good, the full rollout is not happening any sooner than next gen nuclear.
And that the only places that have seriously embraced SWB, such as Germany, have seen electricity prices (and net CO2) rise dramatically. I'm not particularly interested in throwing stones at solar renewables, they are clearly part of the solution and I've no problem with driving innovation in this field to see where it takes us. Who knows it could be the winner.
But then this still unsurpassed presentation from the late David McKay explains the limitations very clearly.
Everyone in the MSR/Thorium field says that the single largest hurdle has been the insane over-regulation of nuclear systems. Instead of requiring proscribed safety outcomes, entities like the NRC detailed specific designs and methods specific to the LWR reactors of the day. That had the effect of dramatically stifling innovation because until investors could see the possibility of the regulators permitted new systems, no-one was willing to put up the cash needed to fully engineer pilot plants.
Well the good news is that regulators have in very recent years have been shifting on this, and programs are underway right now proving materials and engineering. That's literally dated four days ago.
"the insane over-regulation of nuclear systems" – a form of madness?
Yes until about the early 90's nuclear energy was fully competitive on price, but in response largely to Three Mile Island and wildly over exaggerated claims of risk, layers of prescriptive regulation were added on to the industry.
Unfortunately while these merely added huge costs, they did nothing to address the limitations of the fundamental reactor designs of the day. Indeed worse still they effectively locked the industry into one possible version of 'how to do a reactor' while shutting out from development any of the other approximately 1000 other possible ways to do it.
The ‘regulators‘ can make irrational decisions? Doesn't bode well, IMHO.
It was the insane over-reaction and fear mongering by the nuttier segments of the green movement (eg Helen Caldicott) that drove much of the political pressure.
And the regulators, being ultimately political creatures themselves, had to bow to the directions of their masters.
It's widely recognised nowadays that safety regulators of all kinds, are generally much better advised on detailing methods of evaluating hazard, setting the required outcomes and monitoring regimes, rather than proscribing detailed methods that lock an industry into rapidly dating technology.
@RL (8:51 pm) – Dr Caldicott no doubt holds her beliefs at least as dear as you do yours. According to Wikipedia she was a talented clinician, as well as a real dynamo in the anti-nuclear movement.
Would she tolerate the "fear mongering" and "insane over-reaction" labels, do you think, recognising your belittling "nutty segment" pigeonholing for what it is?
Great that safety regulators are improving – seems to be working, and they certainly have a lot on their plates. One down…
I've listened to some of Caldicott's anti nuclear presentations on YT many years back, and it was realising that she was just making shit up that I started to question the standard fear based narrative around nuclear power that I had uncritically swallowed up until then.
As it happens I worked for about seven years in the 80's with Kr-85 beta sources used in the paper industry to measure sheet density. So while I cannot claim to be a nuclear engineer, between Physics 101 and some real life experience with radiation sources, Caldicott started triggering my bullshit detector. As it happens I'm not the only one.
Once upon a time she had a wide audience, but frankly these days she's widely regarded as an extremist nutter with a radical agenda. The anti-nuclear movement's Lord Monckton if you will.
As for that list of incidents, note carefully the death toll given. In all but a handful of the death toll is zero.
The big three incidents are Three Mile Island (precisely the accident scenario Alvin Weinberg had warned about a decade earlier), Chernobyl a design that would never have been licensed anywhere outside of the Soviet Union, and Fukushima. The direct death toll between all three is less than 100, the indirect toll less than 10,000. (And I’m being generous here.)
And keep in mind I'm explicitly not advocating for any more of these obsolete reactor designs that are essentially refugees from the dawn of the nuclear age back in the 40's.
Now compare the hysteria generated over this hazard with this. You read that correctly 10,000 deaths per fucking day.
Your comment oozes belittling antipathy.
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2015/03/03/noam-chomsky-state-power-trumps-actual-security-again-and-again/
Helen Caldicott speaks at the conclusion of her symposium “The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction” 3/1/2015 New York Academy of Medicine. Caldicott has been warning of the dangers of nuclear war and nuclear radiation for decades. She is a Gandhi Peace Prize winner. Her website is: http://helencaldicottfoundation.org/
https://youtu.be/iCRc0OyuIvY
"10,000 deaths per fucking day" – not quite that bad, but still awful.
So is this. If only it was "over".
November
3 rd 8244
4 th 9161
5 th 8855
6 th 9247
7 th 7706
8 th 6114
9 th 6727
10th 9333
11th 10161
12th 9655
13th 9971
14th 8820
15th 6682
Mind you, it's not all bad:
Sorry, bogus link pasted above without checking.
This works one works. https://www.helencaldicott.com/
In the case of Caldicott I'm quite happy to call it as I see it. Far from 'telling the truth' she's been caught out spouting arrant, alarmist nonsense over and over. The two links I provided above are just a small sample, no serious person can be bothered tracking it all down. Hell even I could spot the crap just based on my own rudimentary experience.
(As an mildly interesting aside, the same 8 years in the paper industry also taught me the fundamentals of IR absorption, which was the method we used to measure moisture content in lightweight sheets. Oddly enough this same experience meant that climate change skeptics also triggered the same response with their own bullshit science. It's one thing to judge a claim when it's based on a theoretical understanding only, quite another when you've worked with the tools every day for years.)
As for the speech you linked to, Caldicott's characterisation of humanity as 'a disease infecting the planet' is a deeply vile, truly hateful, anti-human ideology that I profoundly and vehemently reject. This is what I meant by an "extremist nutter with a radical agenda".
Still Gordon McDowell (who has been closely involved in this story for well over a decade and is an exceptionally well informed lay person) did put this video together back on 2014. OK so it's nearly 2 hrs long, but if I can sit through it and learn something, then what's stopping you if you really do care about the future?
"10,000 deaths per fucking day" – maybe not quite that bad, but still awful.
Yes, even if that figure is too high by a factor of 10 (let me be really generous) it's still massively higher than any harm ever done by nuclear energy. Yet hardly anyone gives a shit. Not one little bit.
From this I conclude that the hysteria over the potential harms from nuclear energy are nothing more than an irrational folly. And Caldicott is one of the worst fear-mongering liars of the lot.
You know, it's funny – I listened to that Caldicott YouTube video and heard an intelligent, warm and caring 76-year old; very human/humane, and she seems to have been highly regarded.
Then I reread what you'd written about her, and tbh I couldn't detect those qualities in your comments. Your opinions seemed ott and off.
Can you please provide some evidence that Caldicott characterised humanity as "a disease infecting the planet" – honestly find that hard to believe because it seems so out of character with what little I've learned about her. You wouldn't invent such a vile slur just because you despise Caldicott and all she stands for, would you? But that's how it starts, and pretty soon you're "just making shit up".
Can you please provide some evidence that Caldicott characterised humanity as "a disease infecting the planet" –
At exactly 2:41 in your linked video she asks "what is the disease infecting the planet" … and then goes on to clearly finger humanity, men in particular, as that disease.
As for her flat out lies, I've already provided the links detailing some of them. If you don't know much about nuclear science then she's very smooth and convincing. Like all true cons, she has the sincerity faked down to perfection.
OK, so Caldicott said/asked (@2.41 minutes): "So what, what is the disease now infecting the planet? And who is or are responsible?"
What I heard was an expression of (IMHO rational) concern about some aspects of human psychology and behaviour – the idea that Caldicott is characterising humanity as "a disease infecting the planet" just doesn't compute. Maybe we each see/hear what we want to see/hear, or "We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
https://www.vice.com/en/article/9aey95/radioactive-cats-and-nuclear-priests-how-to-warn-the-future-about-toxic-waste
Some of the newest generation design would use this waste as fuel.
The old designs that are used in currently operating nukes extract less than 1% of the available energy in the fuel going in. That's wasteful of the fuel, as well as creating the hazardous waste disposal problem. Then what does come out the end that's no longer useful as fuel has much shorter half-lives that its hazardous.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fast-reactors-to-consume-plutonium-and-nuclear-waste/
https://grist.org/article/next-gen-nuclear-is-coming-if-we-want-it/
It's a common misconception that a very long half life is inherently more dangerous. Actually it's the exact opposite. All other aspects being equal, it's the fissile isotopes with the very short half lives that are more dangerous to be around.
But otherwise Andre is right, the problem with the old solid fuel LWR reactors is that in order to protect the mechanical integrity of the fuel rods, they have to be removed when less than 1% of the U-235 is consumed. Which creates an unfortunately large volume of waste, and that's the real problem.
Reactors where the fuel is molten simply do not have this problem, and can be designed to consume pretty much any percentage of the fissile material you want, thus dramatically reducing the volume of waste.
Better still you have much more opportunity to post-process the fuel when it's in liquid form than when it's solid. This means that not only are you dealing with much smaller volumes, you have more control over exactly what isotopes are in the waste stream.
It's still not something to be treated lightly, but the problem is a far more reasonable one.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
@arkie
Two people with strong engineering backgrounds have outlined that the information you are posting is misleading.
The new generation of molten salt reactors being developed will happily munch up this old solid fuel reactor waste as fuel. If you really are worried about this problem, then you should be strongly advocating for a new technology that will solve the problem.
@RL Misleading huh?
I'm sure Gerald S. Frankel, Distinguished Professor of Engineering will glad to hear his work isn't needed, we just have to wait for next generation reactors to deal with the tonnes of pre-existing waste.
However it's going to require more 'socialism' than you're personally comfortable with:
…
https://energycentral.com/c/ec/forecast-future-gen-iv-reactors-5050-chance-success-three-types
@ arkie
However it's going to require more 'socialism' than you're personally comfortable with:
Not quite sure how you reach that conclusion. The ORNL MSR-E research reactor that I've frequently referenced was of course a 100% govt funded program. I fully agree it would never have been funded from the private sector.
Sadly being a govt funded program, it was also vulnerable to the whims of corrupt and ignorant politicians who pulled the funding because they wanted it to go to another pork barrel exercise elsewhere. (That turned out to be a technical dead end and a monumental waste of money.) So there's that aspect of 'socialism' to consider as well.
But virtually all of the recent progress in the field has been govt funded one way or another, and this is all a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The usual pattern is that govts take the risk on developing the early fundamentals, while the private sector is better at optimising the designs, and the mass rollout production phase.
Frankel's article on first scan reads very well and is consistent with all the other information I've encountered. Yes there are risks, but he goes into considerable detail on the various approaches currently being pursued. (My personal favourite, the MSR being only one of them.)
They are, of course, using hyperbole to get across what they want without actually saying it which is the removal of regulations.
What's needed is an update of regulations taking into account the knowledge gained on the subject over the last few decades.
This applies to all legislation all of the time but industry doesn't like regulation at all which is why we keep hearing the BS about getting rid of the red tape.
citation needed that proves causation
Oh dear.
And if you're going to demand a citation, you engage with the data and the argument. You don't get to dismiss it just because you don't like what it says.
As I say, industry does itself no favours when it presents ideological BS.
If you are going to demand a citation you either engage with it's content or accept it.
Otherwise don't demand I do your homework for you.
" Nuclear fission power is not only the safest known energy source, it's the most reliable and has EROI's in excess of 50. The development and mass adoption of new generation MSR designs (which is happening very rapidly right now) would permanently transform human economies and enable a dramatic expansion of development everywhere. "
^What he said
What is the EROI of nuclear power?
Wikipedia has a good point on these variable numbers:
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
These numbers are from reputable industry experts.
Basically it depends a bit on the life cycle you allocate to the plant, but they give EROI's of 59 and 70. Much of it goes into the plant construction and decommissioning.
And MSR's require far less steel and concrete and are much easier to decommission. They have physical footprints maybe less than 10% of the existing LWR designs, which directly correlates to that much less steel and concrete.
So the EROI I suggested of 50 is way conservative.
And I'm sure that the study quoted was done by reputable scientists who didn't have an industry bias.
The question of which to believe comes down to the actions of those in industry over the last few decades that have proven such sources to be less than reliable.
Well in that case I reject any and all sources you may care to provide on the grounds that you've selected only the ones that suit your negative argument.
And which ever way you care to cut it, quoting sources that only relate to an obsolete technology version that I’m NOT advocating for is entirely irrelevant anyway.
2010 wasn't all that long ago and its difficult to quote numbers that don't exist.
To me the big problem of nuclear power is still the waste.
I still oppose it in NZ as building nuclear power reactors on the Ring of Fire is contra-indicated no matter how safe that they can be built – we have to work on the fact that nature can bypass that safety.
So, small nuclear reactors powering ships and producing minimal waste.
Well I've taken something of an interest in this topic for some years now, and over time you get a sense of who is reliable, and world-nuclear org is one of the most sober ones out there. These people are real world engineering association and they aren't in the business of putting up fake information that can be easily discredited.
As for the waste problem; well as I said above, if you really are serious about this then you should strongly welcome the new generation of MSR's that can readily use existing waste stockpiles as fuel.
As for whether this new generation of reactors should be used in NZ, I'm reasonably agnostic. Like Australia our solar renewable potential is pretty good, and it's quite achieveable for NZ to get to 100% electricity without nuclear.
On the other hand it's not helpful to overstate the engineering risks; keep in mind that even in very large earthquakes industrial plant actually performs really well from a structural safety point of view. A massive volcano that consumes the plant might be a possibility, but in that case I think you'd have bigger problems to worry about. Unlike all existing reactors, all the new generation designs are explicitly designed to be 'walk away safe' in all rational scenarios.
Most of the problems people are having here is that they're projecting poorly understood mis-information that simply isn't relevant to the technology I'm talking about. It's like worrying about air pollution from an electric car.
Heditere in NZ is an outrage! https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/here-we-are/story/2018772391/woman-evicted-with-3-hours-notice-for-being-transgender
"Final Notice" was the subject line of the email sent to Kristine Ablinger just before 1pm on a Monday afternoon.
It was from her flatmate who owned a three-bedroom house in Auckland's Birkenhead. Kristine rented a small room with a little balcony and a sliver of a sea view. The room felt perfect – cosy and private. A space of Kristine's own, where she would be safe when she began taking hormones.
However, there was no greeting in the body of the message from her flatmate.
"I think you need to know that William told me that you felt that you had found a safe place to transition and I have to say that this is a BIG issue," it began. "So without being offensive … I need to honestly let you know that although I don't have issues with transexual transgender etc, in general, I don't want any part of that in my house [sic]." …
"I am not your mother and I do not need to be involved in this kind of thing, which is not something I believe in at all", it continued. "I have tried to tolerate it and be supportive because I realise that this is you and who you are. Unfortunately, I don't like it at all. I find it extremely offensive."
How can this be in NZ – or anywhere? Such short term notice? For not doing anything harmful to the property or the landlord. What is our human rights legislation for but to provide practical backing to us so we can be treated fairly!
Also what a hypocritical load of BS – "I need to honestly let you know that although I don't have issues with transexual transgender etc, in general, I don't want any part of that in my house [sic]." The point here is that the landlord does have issues with it, and doesn't want to be involved closely with someone going through a sex change in their house. So stating that is their right. And this person has a room only and presumably would share all other facilities. But throwing out this otherwise perfectly okay tenant at the drop of a hat is extreme and there should be a mandatory period of one month notice with no withdrawal of facilities or freedom. That would be showing respect for both parties' views. The landlord should not be allowed to be so arbitrary.
There is an important point at the bottom of all this. Some thoughts from experience. Don't tell all about yourself on-line, to anybody and everybody and particularly – anyone who has power to deny you something, take something away from you. Don't lie to people, tell them honestly the minimum of what they require, but don't burble your personal life and thoughts. You never know from looking at people and from short conversations with them, what rules their minds, hearts and souls. You will find out eventually by thinking about what they say, and taking note of what they do. The person behind the facade may surprise you; there will be another side to them, propensities which you will define good or bad depending on your own.
I cannot see what the rush was for the owner to ask the flatmate to leave in 3 hours. I was aware that without a contract a flatmate can be asked to leave with next to no notice which is unreasonable. There is a process for an eviction but not for a flatmate without a contract. Even if not disclosing transitioning this could have happened to Kristen.
People who have fought for the right to not be discriminated against are still being discriminated against and this needs to be looked into.
David Cunliffe slams Auckland Council's $1.4b paper losses as 'incompetent'- Whist PR can spin this as a paper loss – There is also a real term consequence in that council is paying interest costs higher than would be if paying the floating rate – So more rate income is directed to interest than with hind sight would be.
In treasury depts I have been involved in only a portion of the debt would have such a mechanism attached and there would be varying tenures of time e.g. 1,3,5 year terms
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/david-cunliffe-slams-auckland-councils-14b-paper-losses-as-incompetent/OJNSQNVSBDZ376SDGF7JWEAEBE/
A thread on monumental stupidity.
https://twitter.com/Cleavon_MD/status/1327494611338608640
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1327494611338608640.html
Thats one very very dark thread.
“RCEP”-Oh well, there goes any chance of stopping raw log exports to build houses in NZ!
NZ would be far better off as an independent, non aligned nation, doing mutually advantageous bilateral trade deals.
But of course we have 5 Eyes standing on our throat, and international finance capital in the form of Australian banks.
RCEP seems to be opposed by some as it chops the yanks out and may aid China. Well tough, Trump’s US effectively chopped NZ out. Global trade agreements are usually bad news for small and non imperialist countries, so Labour has made another serious blunder (or great move no doubt if you are of the Blairite persuasion).
China not in the RCEP and India did not sign. News at 1pm that Covid found on NZ export of frozen meat to China. Not sure of the source of contact or how trade with China could be affected.
NZ might get a good trade deal with the UK. I would be wary of trade with the EU as the UK left the EU.
citation?
Sorry they are.
Can we stop this experiment with our society and not monetise parenting any longer? Parenting is derided, with jaundiced views, and the action is in replacing it with farming children, with vague notions of kibbutzes and that they worked well? They began in a different time and a different society which had ties and shared values. Here government tears down values, such as parent-run, whanau-run kindergartens and makes it hard for the parents to continue often with excessive demands for improved conditions appropriate for businesses looking for profit.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/430709/ece-teachers-reveal-centres-secrets-in-national-survey
A thousand early childhood teachers have so little confidence in the early learning centres they work in that they wouldn't send their own children there.
What modern women's dream was – the opportunity to have a career, take time out to bring up their small number of children, and then have a satisfying working life in the community. They would work hard at both jobs, but the parenting was important. It would be nice to have two parents involved in bringing up the family, but single or solo parents would also follow this pattern. What they needed was to keep involved in training, and be able to boost their small income on top of a reasonable benefit, and it would be good if their regular workshops with speakers, and a sort of club so that single parents could get to know each other, and be advised what help was available.
Instead mothers were allowed to work which was not so accepted mid century, but as time went on and the single parent numbers grew, they were forced out to work, the children left in some sort of care, and the training and skills part was withdrawn. The healthy program was gutted, and now it's a bare bones approach and society shows it in many ways. The good thinkers need to come to the fore and restore the parents to a high priority, winning spot; perhaps the deadheads could regard it as a sport, seeing that is all that some people seem to care about supporting.
Childcare centres have a lot in common with rest homes, it is about the profit and not the care of those in the centre.
Qualified ECE teachers are underpaid compared to kindergarten teachers. Primary care nurses (GP and rest homes) are underpaid compared to DHB nurses. Rest home workers and some ECE employees are under skilled for the work they do.
If parents want to own a home they both need to work, not like 20 years ago when homes were affordable.
So right, Treetop, although there are exceptions (not nearly enough!). As an ece lecturer (recently retired) I have spent time in centres I wouldn't let the hotel cat into, let alonr a child! They have become businesses rather than centres of education under the profit-making private ownership model and we have gone from being an internationally respected ece country with our amazing bi-cultural curriculum and our high standard of teacher training to a shameful embarrassment as quality was able to slide furthet and furthrr down the scale in the interests of profit. Add to that the fact that the choice to work for women became a necessity as the price of living became too much, in most cases, for the single earner to bear and you have a recipe for near disaster!
There is nothing I could tell you which you would not know.
Enjoy your retirement.
There is always something new to learn, Treetop 😏
Oddly enough I'm not particularly interested in banging on about MSR's and nuclear energy at great length here. It's pertinent to the OP, but tangential, and I've been over this ground before.
The core argument of the OP is focussed on how we might re-order our energy and economic systems to take better account of the both human and planetary health. The default 'greenie' approach to this challenge is 'de-power' and transition to something different. (And some more extreme activists demand 'die-off' as well.)
This is all well and good, except we should take note that some 85% of the world's population pretty much live like this already. It's a condition generally called 'poverty' and if you ask the people doing it, they mostly would prefer something better.
Now that 'something better' absolutely does not have to be emulating the inefficiencies of the developed world, and especially not the USA. They have every opportunity to leap frog the developmental stages we went through, and go directly to systems that are truly better than what we are doing at present.
And that is a much more interesting and challenging question than merely 'de-powering'.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
I understand why 'de-powering' is uninteresting to some, but it will be very challenging.
Not challenging at all … shutting things down is easy peasy. Politically messy though because no-one votes to go backwards.
My understanding of the 'de-powering' strategy is not the same as yours – it encompasses the very challenging consequences of "shutting things down".
Because no one can imagine what such a program would look like,
That's because the idea that you can somehow de-power and economy back to pre-industrial levels, and somehow retain all the material benefits of an high energy industrial economy … is pure magical thinking.
The idea that ‘we‘ could “somehow retain all the material benefits of an high energy industrial economy” is indeed “pure magical thinking” – one would have to be in the grip of a debilitating delusion to assert such a thing.
2029, 2028? I can hardly wait – "pure magical thinking" you say?
There are a number of different approaches to the engineering and delivery of next gen MSR's. Thorcon have adopted a very straightforward methodology that, barring unforeseen political problems, could easily deliver real machines by 2030.
Just three years ago the progress we've made even to this moment, seemed highly unlikely.
Keep in mind the basics of all this were done and dusted back in the 60's. If only fucking Nixon hadn't cancelled the program, the chances are we'd not be having this conversation about climate change at all.
Magical last sentence – germ of an 'alternative history' sci-fi / fantasy novel.
In these 'pandemic times', Stewart’s “The Earth Abides” has taken on a new poignancy for me. “He becomes reconciled to the way things have changed.“
The MSR-E program at ORNL was an outstanding technical success for a purely experimental program. It ran for over four years with absolutely no hazardous incidents.
https://energyfromthorium.com/2016/10/16/ornl-msre-film/
The team fully expected to go on to build a 50MW commercial pilot reactor and were deeply shocked when it didn't.
There is nothing 'scifi' ; about any of this at all. With their inherently much better safety profile, and much lower construction costs there is every reason to suppose that a successful MSR nuclear power program could have evolved during the 70's and 80's, eventually dominating the electricity generation industry and more. In such a scenario coal would have been on the phase out by 2000 at the latest, and most of the accumulated fossil carbon would never have happened.
Was referring to the alternative history ("If only") in your last sentence @9.1.1.2.1.1. In truth we can never know, but belief is a powerful thing.
Good points..and an example of that leap-frogging has already happened..with telephone systems in africa..they went from none to mobile..leap-frogging the poles/lines etc in the developed world..(assenting 'greenie' here…much of what the green-movement does/aspires to…is just pissing about the edges of the actual problems..the examples are legion..)
Let's just assume for the sake of argument that we have cheap, abundant, fossil carbon free energy. I don't care how, let's just go with this pre-supposition. Let's go one step further and go with the idea that effectively unlimited energy would allow us to recycle 95% or more resources, metals, fresh water and so on.
Now start to think about how the entire world, because this is a problem we solve globally or not at all, would look like if we did this.
There are two ways this can go, in a model predicated on the ancient 'growth at all costs' driver, motivated primarily by competition and sexual selection, then it's easy to imagine the outcome as something like the current US on steroids. Only everywhere.
On the other hand as the world develops the population pyramids invert, and we get more older adults everywhere than younger ones. Older people have different priorities as a rule, they're more interested in investing (in the broadest sense of the word) and incomes to sustain them through old age. And we're right on the cusp of making this massive transition right now, in these first few years of this decade.
And it's a trend that will only become more entrenched as this century progresses. This changes everything. We've never been here before, and none of our economic systems have encountered anything like this. Now we could go all gloomy and doomy over this; but in terms of the problem the OP poses, it's actually a remarkable synchronicity, as societies develop, they generally get older and seek more sustainable lifestyles.
Here's my big picture; in order to get to the destination we all want, healthy societies in a sustainable balance with a healthy planet, I'm arguing we need to extend the process of human development everywhere as fast as possible. (And this of course is only possible given the pre-suppositions of my first para.)
So if we really want to do this, how does this look politically?
I posted a long reply to this comment..it seems to have vanished..is it awaiting moderation..?
@weka
You are falling back into your bad old habits of moderating on the basis of personal animosity.
my animosity today is fairly evenly spread. If people want to have side conversations sparked by my post, I'm completely ok with this. Where they're off topic they belong in Open Mike.
Have my comments been trashed..?
Who can tell?
Get thee to a stand-up open-mike nite ..!..such alonquin roundtable standards of wit must be shared with the world…
But seriously…as a labour party loyalist..how are you feeling about what the leaders have said so far…and how much transformation do you think we can expect during the rest of this term of government..?..and in what areas in particular..?
Powerdown isn't de-power (whatever that is). Powerdown is also, specifically, not about inducing society-wide poverty, and it's not about living like the poorest people in the world. I even put references in the post.
I've got little patience these days for people (not just you) using my posts to run their hobby horse arguments. If you want to ignore the basic premises and purpose of the post, then please use Open Mike.
And just today we ordered a copy of Holmgren's book RetroSuburbia: the downshifter’s guide to a resilient future. A$85 as it happens.
You constantly misread my intent, and I can only conclude personal malice is the reason.
Because while everything Susan Krumdieck is talking about is well and good, and truly I'm not throwing rocks at he motivations … we also have to be aware of the limitations she does not address. Most because the lifestyle changes she is talking about are still only possible when they're embedded in a larger industrial society.
To give a crude example, people will still want to have access to fully modern medical systems. No-one for instance is going to tolerate a return to infant mortality rates that saw fully 50% of children die before the age of five. (And this was a reality in even my own family just four generations prior to myself.)
@weka..do you consider stopping farming/eating animals…given the size of that global-footprint..(not to mention all the soy etc grown to feed them…fuel to transport around the globe)..do you regard that change as falling within the scope of yr posted topic..?
Powering down would see local food as a priority, and regenag, rather than veganism. No need to feed animals soy, or for a country like NZ to import animal products from places that do.
So that would mean no exporting..?..and the attendant animal welfare issues are of no import..?
NZ not exporting?
What animal welfare issues? As you already know I am not against killing animals for meat and that I place a high priority on animal husbandry that lessens suffering (eg basically an end to industrial dairying, and instead growing dairy products ethically and regeneratively for local consumption, as well as export for countries in need).
'what animal welfare issues'..(!)..seriously..?..and IMHO there is no way animal slavery/killing/eating …with all the horrors inherent..is/can be 'ethical'…no matter how you package the rotting carcass..and no mention of that very large environmental footprint in yr list of things to do..?..I can't see any reason for that..
Plenty of animals are raised and cared for humanely /shrug. If you can't be bothered being specific there's not much point in talking is there.
I'll pass on doing a primer for you on the animal welfare issues inherent in farming of animals…save to note that the worst things are done to female animals..from the serial-pregnancies.short/brutish life of the farmed/milked cow..to the oscenities of the farrowing crates female pigs are confined in..female chooks etc in harrowing conditions…I would submit that animal slavery is also a feminist issue..
Happy meat is happy meat.
'happy meat' is an oxymoron…
Happy Meal®
:chuckle:
Greg Presland and David Cunliffe are having a crack at Auckland Council's Treasury locking in debt at far higher rates than the current market… effectively foregoing $1.4 billion of funding that would have been available if they'd put it on shorter contracts and gained from lower rates.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/david-cunliffe-slams-auckland-councils-14b-paper-losses-as-incompetent/OJNSQNVSBDZ376SDGF7JWEAEBE/
This will come to a head at the Auckland Council Finance Committee meeting this Thursday.
Pretty mean if you are one of the hundreds who have been sent packing from Council through shortage of funding.
So the nation stops @ 4 pm to hear j.ardern going into great detail on what she is doing for the upcoming week..(!)..w.t.f. was that all about..?..I think a lot of us couldn’t care less about what she is doing day by day…we just want her to do what she promised she would do..
Not going to happen, unless significantly pressured into it. I don’t begrudge anyone feeling grateful for Jacinda and Robbo’s Govt., for a few brief weeks in Level 4 lockdown, putting people before capital. But it is past time to push back. Including recovering some of the billions ladled out to employers whether they needed it or not, and like CHH and Fletchers still stole workers annual leave, and did not pass on the full bailout amounts.
Which brings me to the 60 NGOs that wrote the PM a letter suggesting benefits be raised. Those organisations, and the people they serve and represent, could perhaps become an extra Parliamentary opposition, an Alliance for community organisation with a focus on action.
All those new Labour MPs should have their Electorate Offices regularly picketed and visited. No Labour Minister should appear anywhere without placards and a group, large or small, reminding them of what they have not done for the NZ working class and underclass, and what they have done for corporates, SMEs, tin pot small business operators, rentiers, speculators, landlords, and property owning middle classes.
Yes the Inquisition must be unrelenting. We are past the comfy chair for recalcitrant Labourites. I think I asked who the old guard would be who would be nicely managing and navigating the Good Ship Lollipop around the reefs of actual breakthrough so no holes get in the hull before the next election. I probably didn't get an answer last time – but a list of the likely suspects would be interesting.
A litmus test for politicians to find out who is pregnant with valuable ideas that could be delivered before mid-year 2121 and who is sterile would be handy!
I thought the briefing was important because some people wanted to know if they'd be locked down again.
Did you hear it..?..if so you could not have missed the opening being the contents of her appointment diary for the next week..(!)..and it was well signaled that the press conference was about mask wearing..not about closedown…did you hear it..?
🙄
OMG! Was i meant to stop? Did i break the law?
Yes..you will be tested on it in due course..nation must stop and listen to the words of the great leader/incrementalist..
It's the post-Cabinet press conference and it's been the custom for every PM, for decades. Including her upcoming schedule.
The nation doesn't "stop at 4 pm". And I note you commented at 4.12 pm, when Hipkins and Ardern were still speaking, which was followed by half an hour of them taking reporters' questions on a range of topics – as usual. And the news was pretty important.
A reminder: no MPs have been sworn in. Parliament has not started. Next week the government will set out its programme ("speech from the throne").
Again, standard procedure. Have attention spans diminished so far that we've become sugar-filled kids in the back seat … "are we there yet?".
Seeing as the 'there's were promised to us before the first term of this government…our impatience @ non-delivery/broken promises can hardly be accused of being premature..and will she deliver in this ‘programme’..?..or will it be yet another exercise in neoliberal incrementalism..?..with a sauce of delayed gratification of any of the measly offers that tattered ideology serves up..