"Without government support, this coastal shipping capability between regional ports would not have been available to New Zealand," Allan said.
"This investment in the blue highway will also speed up recovery efforts, allowing for the swifter delivery of construction and rebuild materials into the East Coast."
All good. About that Government support. Howabout ramping that up ! And looking at other options for the "Blue Highway". Are some kind of landing barge….shallow draught vessels a possible? for appropriate areas…of course.
One of my hobbies is "how would we survive a zombie apocalypse in the rest of the world?"
Food isn't a problem, but distributing it is. You'd see a massive emptying out of anywhere not connected by sea for food transport. The government probably needs a "book" that contains everything we'd need to do to survive an apocalypse like a nuclear war or alien attack. A chapter in that book would be entitled "a simple design for a 120 ton wooden schooner".
Hi Sanctuary. Well….there still maybe still some Old School (and notso old : ) tradies that would be up for that.Of course, Apprentices needed ! We could use Native timber (Sustainable grown, as in replant !)
I am not an expert on big power projects (perhaps Advantage may have view? Nah, who am I kidding, of course he'll have a view ) by any stretch of the imagination, but I wonder if we are going to spend sixteen billion on pumped hydro to buy the country what is effectively a giant six week duration battery that is 1000km of vulnerable power lines from the main population centres then ought we not consider what else we might get for the money?
For example, sixteen billion might get us something like a 1200MW nuclear power station at Marsden point. That is four times the output of the Clutha high dam. It is a geologically stable area (although you'd have to mitigate the design for tsunamis) and it is less than 150km from Auckland and building it there would mean you don't have to significantly alter an area of natural beauty in the South Island, since the site is already used for heavy industry. The lifespan of these nuclear power stations is 80 odd years so the ROI would be comparable (as an aside, I'd love someone to do an ROI analysis of the Acqua Vergine, built in 19BC and still going strong) to pumped hydro.
Building nuclear would require a massive cultural headshift on the part of NZers, but with Australia buying nuclear powered submarines as part of the rising tensions in the Asia Pacific region maybe building a nuclear power plant would give us the excuse to move away from a complete ban on nuclear reactors anyway.
Anyone got any better facts to contribute to this?
Your pro-nuke arguments could apply in britain/europe..
But we are blessed with multiple other options..
I don't know enough about the proposed water retention plan to credibly comment on it..
But it is clear that the amount of dosh being spent on it would buy a shedload of solar/wind/tidal power..which would neatly supplement our existing hydro assets..
I mean, we could have 600 giant wind turbines in the Kaipara/Taranaki bight… But thier is a question around environmental footprint. Surely a nuclear power station that takes up a fraction of the space and needs a lot less maintenance might be better?
Each turbine has highly unstable generation. Each collector group has unstable generation. Each wind farm has unstable generation. Wind farms simply can't be base load.
I have several posts I want to do. It's not unreasonable to ask the nuclear question given our isolation, generator concentration, and market that is screwing us all.
Even after 4 country-altering crises since 2011, National just can't figure out what the state is for.
Nuclear might take up a fraction of the space of wind farms but the toxic waste it produces continues to be the major headache that nobody has a cure for.
There are a fair few concerns around the effects on marine life etc. Very hard to figure out what effect the infrastructure will have on the tidal currents and the 'noise' from the turbines interfering with marine mammals. Alot to go wrong and not a whole lot of understanding at this point in time.
Yes, potentially by an order of magnitude given the likes of the Kaipara are the nursery for massive amount of our snapper as an example. Interfering with the currents or the pressure waves that turbine blades can generate.
Imaging the noise of windmills but underwater, or how the altering flows has changed our rivers for the worst. Dont think we want to be doing that to our harbours etc…
The nuclear industry has a very strong track record of grossly underestimating the cost of builds. Building it within the proposed time frame is another of their challenges.
It's an issue with all major construction projects, but put the nuclear factor in there and it goes out by 10x. One of the reasons so few of them have been built in the recent generations.
Pumped hydro is within our skillset, nuclear is a whole new game from planning, through construction and then operation, both at a plant and grid level. Big ask for a small country.
It's a very interesting and mature technology building these things. I wish I was 40 years younger, I'd be in there. This is a very good overview of a similar, but smaller project in Europe, covers the technology involved and the problem solving that goes along. Onslow would be very similar in tech and geological challenges, but bigger.
It is a geologically stable area (although you'd have to mitigate the design for tsunamis) and it is less than 150km from Auckland
Actually Sanct there is a serious fault in your proposed site. namely the Kerepehi Fault
The Kerepehi Fault has a maximum potential of generating earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.2 or above.[1]
…
Previously it was thought to contain 5 fault segments with events separated by many thousands of years of moderate magnitude but the mean event separation anywhere in the fault zone is now known to be only about 1000 years in what is a belt of many faults and at least 6 complex segments on land. Three segments have been identified under the sea.[2] The fault system extends therefore from Waiheke Island to south of Te Poi
…
Recent historic ruptures have involved up to 2 m (6.6 ft) of vertical displacement, which suggests associated contemporary earthquake risk that could be of intensity 7.0 at the nearby major population centres, being Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga and Thames.[5] Forty percent of New Zealand’s population live, and 40% of GDP generation occurs within 50 km (31 mi) of the fault.[3] A major magnitude 8 to 10 event resulting from up to 3 segment rupture would be devastating to Hauraki Plains infrastructure.
The distance from Waiheke Island to Marsden Point is a little over 100km
Why is no one in NZ talking about gravity batteries, where excess power is stored by lifting weights? You can transfer power to other spots and store it there on-site, as the setups are scaleable.
When I was first apprenticed to the NZED >50 years ago there was a possibility that one day I would get to work at a nuclear power station.
Interest in nuclear power in New Zealand in the late 1950s and 60s was driven by rising demand for electricity. The New Zealand Electricity Department (NZED) included nuclear power in its range of possible generating sources, and in 1964 an interdepartmental Nuclear Power Siting Committee was established to begin the preliminary selection of possible reactor sites. By 1965 planning was under way for a 1000-megawatt (MW) station in Northland, with a site on the Kaipara Harbour being favoured. Engineering staff of the NZED were enrolled on overseas training courses, and an undergraduate course in reactor engineering was established at the University of Canterbury. During the 1960s and early 70s, several staff of the National Radiation Laboratory undertook training in reactor safety and licensing.
Not to mention that it would make us a 'nuclear state', hence a legitimate target. And what is the carbon cost of mining, transporting, storing, removing and disposing of the material, even before the super-long-term waste maintenance?
Yeah, I wondered about using subduction zones as waste disposal sites… The crap just goes back into the core and burns away into its elemental parts…. Turns out they work on vastly different time scales than would be useful to us ☹️
You want to store spent fuel where it can be accessed as we currently only use about 10% of the available energy. As tech improves the currently 'spent' fuel will be viable again.
And in that article not a word about how much waste uranium and contaminated coolant will be discharged and what they plan to do about it. Very 70s – trumpet about your state-of-the-art designs but don't worry about the discharges.
Recent events have forced all sorts of people to think seriously about nuclear power, many for the first time in their lives. And often their first question is: what about the waste? What will we do with the extremely radioactive spent fuel?
There are two keys to understanding the nuclear used fuel (aka waste) problem:
1. The quantities involved. Thanks to nuclear's amazing energy density, the amount of used fuel is so small that we can a afford to handle it very carefully.
2. The difference between the three forms of radiation emitted by the used fuel: alpha particles, electrons, and photons (often called gamma rays). Alpha particles have no penetrating power. They are stopped by a piece of paper or a few centimeters of air. Electrons (confusingly called beta rays in this context) have very little penetrating power. Most are stopped by the outer layer of our skin. Alpha particles and most electrons must be swallowed to be a health hazard. They require little or no shielding.
Photons on the other hand can have enormous penetrating power. High energy photons can pass all the way through a human being. You don't want to mess with these photons. Fresh used fuel puts out a lot of high energy photons and needs lots of shielding.
Overtime, radioactive materials decay, and the radiation levels drop off. Different radioactive materials decay at very different rates. Most of the photon emitters in the used fuel decay rather rapidly. After less than 600 years, the photon dose rate at a fuel element surface is so low, that according to Department of Energy rules, it can be handled without any shielding at all. For practical purposes, the photon emitters are gone in 600 years. What's left are alpha and a small amount of electron emitters.
The electron and especially the alpha emitters tend to decay far more slowly. 95% of the used fuel is Uranium-238 (or 238U), an alpha emitter. The half-life of 238U is 4.5 billion years. The alpha emitters are around essentially forever.
So the rule is simple. Don't eat spent nuclear fuel, even if it's 600 years old. But you have plenty of substances around the house for which the same rule applies.
And this assumes we do nothing with this material other than just store it. When in reality the solid 238U fuel rods still contain 97% of their original energy. We already know in principle how to extract this energy by reprocessing it, and with few decades of serious effort can fully commercialised these processes.
Which means in the medium term the actual volume of high level gamma emitting waste that would require safe storage would be less than 1- 2% of the already tiny volumes involved. There are any number of acceptably secure means to manage this.
Another key aspect not covered in my quote above, but delved into in depth by Delvanney here. The idea that any amount of radiation – no matter how small – causes accumulated catastrophic harm is a stupid lie. If this were the case the natural background radiation all life is exposed to would have rendered all life extinct billions of years ago. All the evidence suggests that our cellular DNA repair mechanisms can handle radiation up to dose rates of about 1-20 mSv/day. It is the rate that matters, not the cumulative dose. And for almost all sane scenarios the worst case power plant release or waste stream exposure is extremely unlikely to reach anything close to these dose rates for the general public.
As problems go nuclear waste streams have never so much as harmed a single person, yet for some reason this is why nuclear power cannot solve climate change which is claimed to be an existential crisis that could kill billions. This makes no rational sense whatsoever.
If you are saying that nuclear power plants can have failures then I totally agree with you. On current experience with all generation reactor designs we can estimate approximately one radiation release per 4000 reactor years of operation. In their operating life so far existing Gen 3+ reactors have not had a significant radiation release, and upcoming Gen 4 designs can reasonably expect to be as least as good if not better.
Nonetheless it is an engineering fallacy to claim we can build reactors of any kind that will never have any kind of failure. It is useful to make a comparison with commercial aviation. They invest heavily in making flying remarkably safe – yet they never pretend that an aircraft cannot have an accident. A fact they remind you of every time you board a plane and sit through a safety briefing.
Having agreed that it is impossible to have no radiation releases from NPP operation, the next question is – what is the harm of such radiation releases to the general public? In this respect for two of your three example cases the answer is a definitive zero.
Chernobyl is addressed in Sec 14 of this document. – a worst case accident of an uncontained design that would never have been licensed outside of the Soviet Union, and grotesquely mismanaged as only a pack of communist fuckers could – the confirmed harm was remarkably lower than most people imagine. We know for certain that the accident caused 59 deaths of which 57 were from radiation. All higher estimates are based on a faulty LNT model that pretends that living cells cannot repair DNA damage, and while I accept this point can be debated, it will still be orders of magnitude less harmful than this:
Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found.
Since 1986 cumulatively fossil fuel pollution may well have already caused hundreds of millions of premature deaths – and yet we have continued to use them because the benefits outweighed the costs.
Sure, not so many people died immediately, but what about 200, 000 displaced, longer term radiation deaths and miscarriages, and a 4,000 km2 exclusion zone that will radiate gently for a while to come. I do admit it makes a fantastic wildlife sanctuary, but otherwise would have been productive land.
Also, Russia has threatened existing Ukraine nuclear power stations in the current conflict. Home-made dirty bombs.
the irrational fear-mongering bugaboo of how dangerous it is continues to be recycled. We should know better by now – it is not the 1980's any more.
I have no problem building nuclear power in nations that are not covered with volcanoes, and major faults.
But to suggest they be built in this country is the height of hubris. We have found new fault lines in the last 15 years we did not know were there. We have regular volcanic activity. We are moving, and have earthquakes every day.
It's a ticking time boom to build in NZ. We are stuck with wind, solar and if they can get it right, tidal. But building nuclear here is just stupid beyond measure.
Sure, not so many people died immediately, but what about 200, 000 displaced, longer term radiation deaths and miscarriages, and a 4,000 km2 exclusion zone that will radiate gently for a while to come.
Three points:
The lower bound on how many people were harmed is 57 ranging up to maybe a few hundred. At the time there was all sorts of absurdly high claims being made, but in the decades since the data is best summarised here:
To summarize the previous paragraphs:
2 workers died in the blast.
28 workers and firemen died in the weeks that followed from acute radiation syndrome (ARS).
19 ARS survivors had died later, by 2006; most from causes not related to radiation, but it’s not possible to rule all of them out (especially five that were cancer-related).
15 people died from thyroid cancer due to milk contamination. These deaths were among children who were exposed to 131I from milk and food in the days after the disaster. This could increase to between 96 and 384 deaths, however, this figure is highly uncertain.
There is currently no evidence of adverse health impacts in the general population across affected countries, or wider Europe.
Combined, the confirmed death toll from Chernobyl is less than 100. We still do not know the true death toll of the disaster. My best approximation is that the true death toll is in the range of 300 to 500 based on the available evidence.
The 4,000km2 exclusion zone is a nonsense. For certain there remain a few hotspots close to the plant which need to be managed, but 'gentle' radiation rates in the vast majority of it are well below the 1mSv/day dose rate. It would be perfectly safe to allow people to return – as did wildlife decades ago.
The RBMK Chernobyl reactor was a type that was never contemplated anywhere outside of the Soviet Union – and yet despite it's dire shortcomings what most people forget is that it was but one of four units operating onsite – the other three continued to operate without serious incident, the last one being operated until Dec 2000. With people working there in complete safety for decades after the disaster.
I know it cannot be proven. but my brother who was vegetarian for all his adult life died in hie early 40's from stomach cancer. He was living in the UK at the time of the Chernobyl disaster and for several years afterwards. He ate a lot of cheese and other dairy products from France and Germany and travelled extensively in both those countries. He was always suspicious that his cancer may have been caused by the consumption of contaminated cheese or similar.
As he died here in New Zealand – he would not have featured in any stats about increased death rates post Chernobyl.
Yes – my recent experience with a certain medical procedure means I can well understand and sympathise with how your brother felt. Not knowing and not having any way of ever knowing is a disturbing position to be in. At best.
The good news is that we now understand that low rates of radiation exposure are very unlikely to cause harm. There are plenty of examples of people who sustained very high cumulative radiation doses, but at a low rate over long periods of time – who appeared to suffer no ill effects. Here is a good document covering this effect.
The other good news is that in the decades since 1986 there has been no detectable rise in excess deaths across Europe that can be attributed to Chernobyl. Again it was only with hindsight that we could determine this for certain.
Of course I cannot say anything absolute about the cause of your brother's cancer – but if it was connected with his consumption of milk and cheese products the isotopes involved 131I and 137Ce would not be typically involved with stomach cancer. Iodine concentrates in the thyroid and has a very short half-life of about 8 days. It is relatively easily managed. Of more concern is 137Cesium that typically substitutes for Potassium and is typically associated with skeletal and muscular cancers.
Again I am not trying to pretend anything definitive here – but with what we know in 2023 there are grounds to think it was unlikely your brother's demise was the result of the Chernobyl release. Which absolves nothing on the Soviet regime for what happened – the people most disgusted and angered by what happened are people who understand nuclear power intimately – and the immense reputational damage it caused.
But building nuclear here is just stupid beyond measure.
The whole of NZ is a geo-technical hazard of some kind. You could argue the entire country is unfit for safe human habitation – but that would be stupid beyond measure as well.
It is is relatively easy to design plants to sustain very large earthquakes. I personally watched a large building containing a large paper machine suffer such serious ground shaking in the 1987 Edgecumbe event that it fluttered like a piece of paper in a gale – and I could not stand up – but afterward there was zero structural damage to the building or the machine itself. This was a very shallow quake that had dramatic surface energy, yet we had the entire site up and running again with two weeks.
If you want to postulate truly catastrophic events like a massive volcanic caldera super-volcanic event devastating much of the North Is – then go right ahead. But I suggest we might have bigger problems to worry about.
Personally I do not think NZ needs to rush into nuclear power; we do have a decent renewable SWB resource to develop over the next few decades and have the luxury of time before any nuclear fission adoption becomes urgent. But globally it is a quite different story.
RedLogix, absorbing the energy from a large rattle is one thing, keeping your plant/building functional if there is uplift or fissuring is a whole different story. In the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake
"About 5,000 square kilometres of land west of the fault was lifted up and tilted. The southern end of the Remutaka Range rose by over 6 metres, but the uplift decreased westward to near zero along the west coast of the Wellington peninsula." https://teara.govt.nz/en/historic-earthquakes/page-3
Now imagine your lovely powerplant with shock absorbers tilted 10 degrees from horizontal, or uplifted 6 m, or with a big crack underneath it.
I can understand your objections – after all images of the devastation from ChCh or more recently Turkey are not pretty.
Yet much of what you are seeing collapsing horribly in these quakes are buildings with a much, much lower specification than what is commonplace in heavy industry. A concrete steel reinforced column that is say 2m square on each side, and filled with so much 30mm steel RIO that the fabricators can barely get their hands in to assemble it – and then filled with very high MPA grade concrete – is astonishingly robust.
When I expressed my amazement at how well that paper machine building had survived with not so much as visible cracks, the engineers pointed out to me that the building, 200m long, 40m wide and 15m high, had been designed to sustain being tilted 30 deg from horizontal in any direction, with 3,000 tonnes of paper making machinery on a mezzanine floor 7m up, with no damage.
(And have to point out again that the Edgecumbe quake was no mere rattle; it may have been only 6.3 Richter, but because of the nature of the event, the surface shaking was extreme in the immediate vicinity. Literally I was thrown many metres off my feet several times with no hope of controlling what was happening. Many people had similar stories.)
And yes the Wairarapa uplifts are bloody impressive – I have walked along that coast many times. Hell when I was working in Dusky Sound we found a relatively recent quake slip that had about 24m of horizontal displacement. So these things are possible.
Yet they are not impossible to design for. Wellington's Te Marua Water Treatment Plant has the main Alpine Fault literally running right through the carpark just metres away from the front door – yet the engineers are confident the facility can sustain any the predicted event. Again it is astonishing what a lot of concrete and steel can do.
But that is the old fashioned way to build nuclear power plants. Most Gen 4 designs are going to be built in a factory, and typically shipped to a coastal site as a single steel fabrication, using the same kind of highly automated and efficient methods we already use in modern ship building. This kind of highly robust facility can be designed to sustain unthinkably catastrophic events – again I'll point to Thorcon's approach as an example.
Engineers are typically highly motivated to learn from their mistakes – and events like TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima are closely studied afterward. (One of the root causes of the TMI incident was that operators thought they had commanded an important pressure relief valve closed, when in fact it was physically stuck open. Because there was no position feedback from the valve, no-one in the control room knew this for far too long. Directly because of the reports that came out of this event, valve position feedbacks that were rare beforehand, have become virtually universal throughout all heavy industry.)
Looping back to the analogy with commercial aviation – imagine if the world had said we were not going to fly anymore because of the Hindenburg. That because of that mistake we were incapable of learning from it and making aviation acceptably safe.
For a very long time I was firmly on the anti-nuke side of this argument. But despite a decent technical education for many decades I believed a lot of half-truths and distortions – and looking back on a lot of what I was saying a decade ago is an exercise in humility.
Oddly enough the turning point for me was Fukushima itself. At first I was alarmed as was almost everyone else – but then slowly it dawned on me that it was not a radiation catastrophe turning the entire Pacific Ocean into a dead wasteland as some where predicting.
After this I invested quite a few thousand hours learning as much as I could on what this industry was really about. And in this respect I do not demand anyone else simply accept anything I say about nuclear just because I say it. If there is a lesson I learned here it is about respecting other people's right to an independent search for truth.
Nuclear fission engineering is a serious business and I do not want to gloss over any of the very real challenges that remain, even with the Gen 4 designs I have frequently pointed to. But there are no magical energy sources that come with no downsides – there are no free lunches and I accept nuclear fission comes with it's own price. Yet I would contend the very real costs of unconstrained climate change will be in the long run far, far worse.
PS – no I have not seen anyone suggesting subduction zones as a disposal method. I suspect the objection would be the slow and uncontrolled burial in ocean depths with limited options to react to the unexpected. But next time I am chatting with some of my online contacts I will ask about it if I remember.
I have no problem building nuclear power in nations that are not covered with volcanoes, and major faults.
I do. If humans allow climate to get so bad that it collapses civilisation (this is not a fringe theory), who will look after the power stations and nuclear waste?
This [energy] imbalance, if we want to stabilize climate, means that we must reduce CO2 from 391 ppm, parts per million, back to 350 ppm. That is the change needed to restore energy balance and prevent further warming.
…
The important point is that we will have started a process that is out of humanity’s control.
… So now you know what I know that is moving me to sound this alarm. Clearly, I haven’t gotten this message across. The science is clear. I need your help to communicate the gravity and the urgency of this situation and its solutions more effectively. We owe it to our children and grandchildren.
We’ve not been living within Earth’s means since the early 1970s. This is according to data collected by the United Nations and used every year by think tank Global Footprint Network, to calculate Earth Overshoot Day.
As someone fortunate enough to be born into a 'good' NZ family, the interval from the 1950s onward has been an exceptional time to be alive.
Many of us still don't know how lucky we were – yet.
A not unreasonable question, but again you have to ask if civilisation has collapsed so suddenly and dramatically that managing the legacy tail of retired nuclear power plants cannot be done – then I would suggest we have bigger problems to worry about.
Personally I find myself increasingly squeezed between climate deniers who still want to pretend that we can do unconstrained CO2, and climate catastrophisers who insist on immediate and radical industrial dismantling and systems transformation.
On the one had the deniers pretend we can fuck with intricate climate systems we do not properly understand, and on the other the alarmist pretend we can radically fuck with economic and energy systems upon which depend the lives of billions, with only happy consequences. In my view both are insanely risky pathways.
Nothing about our future is certain or guaranteed, but I have consistently argued our best bet is to treat this as the engineering problem it is and rationally plan to transition toward nuclear fission over the next few decades. Just as we have already moved from photosynthesis, to coal, to oil, then gas and now renewables. Eventually we will likely move from fission to fusion – or maybe something entirely unsuspected.
If we have just got on with nuclear energy as we already were in the 70's, we would not even be having this climate conversation now half a century later.
No, we wouldn't be having that conversation, we'd possibly be having one like they have about the Sellafield nuclear power plant. Opened in the 1950's, and expanded and run for 60 years or so, it will take a hundred years to decommission. A nuclear power plant is a gift 'for generations' indeed.
Again I would point to the analogy with the Hindenburg – an engineering failure from very early in the aviation era – that we learned from and did not repeat. We found better and much safer ways to fly.
Same with nuclear power – we never built another 1950's Windscale style pile again. If the world was full of reactors just like it you might have a point. But we don't.
I read that entire article carefully and was not surprised to find it the usual carefully contrived scaremongering. While it heavily emphasises how long spent fuel and waste is radioactive for – it completely fails to distinguish between highly penetrating gamma radiation that needs to be kept isolated for a few centuries at most, and low level alpha radiation that is only dangerous if you ingest the material.
Nor does it mention that this spent fuel is really a highly valuable source of fresh fuel for the next generations of reactors – and that disposing of it in deep underground facilities is incredibly wasteful and unnecessary.
Nor does it mention that medium and low level waste are for the most part harmless. That current exposure levels are set far too low because of the entirely flawed LNT (Linear No Threshold) model that assumes any exposure to radiation – no matter how low, even below the natural background level- is somehow cumulative. This model results in stupidly expensive regulations to reduce radiation levels well beyond any sane requirement.
(Just a few hours ago I read an article written locally here in Perth by a journo privileged to spend a day on a visiting Virginia class sub. One of the nuke officers pointed out that working 24hrs next to the reactor has less total exposure than a day on the beach.)
What matters is the rate at which you are exposed – not the cumulative dose. If you read this article on the Windscale fire you will note the remarkably brave actions of the Reactor Manager Tom Tuohy who must have been highly irradiated many times during the course of the accident – but because he managed to limit the rate of his exposure through instinctive good sense – he suffered no radiation sickness and lived into his 90's.
Once we resume taking a science based approach to properly managing radiation risk we will find most of these absurdly inflated fears and costs around managing spent fuel and waste will become a great deal more manageable.
Please have a read of the effects on a population of low-grade exposure to uranium ore mining pollution in India. It's not contained nuclear waste, but gives a perspective on living in an environment contaminated with uranium waste, ie improperly managed, representing chronic exposure.
New Zealand has been beset by at least four country-altering events since 2009's GFC. Not a "window" so much as the wall fall down. Front fell off.
The stupidity of the Key part-privatisations of energy generators particularly Contact, is that they are now free to lobby hard. So they are. They oppose anything except their own projects. Hence the politics is far harder than it needed to be.
The scale of disability New Zealand is facing if we don't replace our Indonesian brown coal fired thermal baseload energy security should make every major user get noisy. So far it's mostly complaints.
Which project has a shot at completion in time to achieve both national energy security and carbon goals by our stated 2050 goal?
Woods has done really well to protect this concept from the Policy Bonfire Hipkins is undertaking. In fact I'm surprised it hasn't died.
There is a high risk that NZSuper's Taranaki offshore wind deal will fuck up Woods like they did Twyford on light rail, using NZBattery to bury her. They are aggressive lobbyists who undercut policy.
Woods needs to outplay NZSuper and Infratil and ACC and Contact all at once. Very hard. Dr Turner is deep beltway but he's not in the world of energy finance politics, which tends to chew you up fairly fast.
The existing NZBattery proposal will be hard already. Nuclear would require a version of a Strategic Spatial Plan in which multiple regions agree, on untested legislation.
That would not be as hard as it sounds if for example one proposed nuclear the the Kaipara as per the 1970s proposal, and NZBattery in the south.
Believe it or not I expect a future National government to inherit national energy crises far harder than the current term, and on the last 3 decades history they are better at the nation-altering projects than Labour.
A decent HVDC cable to Australia from Taranaki would enable what we really need which is an internationalised energy market, which NZ would export into. That would be a more useful gig for NZSuper, Infratil and ACC in the nation-building game.
Yes. The obvious objection is that NZ lacks the capacity to operate nuclear power at present. Yet one of the main spin-offs from the AUKUS agreement is going to be the rapid development of this capacity in Australia. Already they have hundreds of engineering and technical people in study and training, and while for the next decade it will be focussed on the submarine program, inevitably these people will be available to build out a civilian nuclear program. NZ might well eventually be able to leverage this.
And secondly it is worth noting that most Gen 4 designs intentionally minimise the need for highly skilled operators. Indeed it has been joked that walk-away safe Gen4 designs really could employ Homer Simpson – because there literally is nothing he could do to cause a plant failure.
Besides most of the skills required locally would be in regulatory and engineering agencies within government. It would be the overseas vendors who would do almost all the heavy technical lifting from a design, build and operate perspective.
You trans-Tasman HVDC cable is admirable – but a tad heroic in scope surely? Would there be a decent economic case?
Contact got flogged off well before Key arrived on the scene, in 1999, but aside from that Key's decision to turn the rest of our electricity industry into a vehicle to generate returns for private (and to a lesser extent state) interests has fucked our nation.
Your portrayal of NZ Super brings back the Muldoon Dancing Cossacks portrayal of 1975 Labour's super scheme, with a government fund that powerful it takes over / crushes everything. I shudder at the monster we may have created.
As an aside, is there a breakdown of how Onslow went from 4 Billion to 15.7? Does this include the purchase / nationalisation of Contact. Beause that's the only way I can see the thing functioning.
Now a HVDC link across the Tasman and an integrated energy market across the same with energy flows both ways, now that’s an idea to explore and develop.
Tbf if you were to compare nuclear to a fossil fuels over even a relatively short period of time the death and destruction wrought by coal etc etc would be far worse than nuclear.
There's no way outside of complete castrophe the energy demands of humanity as a whole are going to decrease. Thinking they can or will is essentially sticking your head in the sand. As it stands nuclear is the safest and fastest way forward
this is the thinking that sees the crisis as about carbon isolated from everything else. There's a reason the XR paired the climate and ecological crises. Peak everything tells me that nuclear won't solve the problem because the problem is we act as if there are no limits. But there are and we're about to learn some very hard lessons on that.
But the price of building a nuclear power station must include the cost of decommissioning it, plus l-o-n-g-term waste storage, which exceeds the build price. It’s no cheapie solution.
The shut UK Sellafield plant, which admittedly also reprocessed used uranium rods from round the world, costs £2 billion a year just to maintain. That does not include the cost of dissassembling structures and transferring waste uranium to a planned £56 billion deep mine storage facility. Spent nuclear fuel is no picnic, and is essentially ignored by most nuclear-powered countries.
”Former National Party leader Todd Muller will step down at the next election.
Muller is MP for the Bay of Plenty. In a statement on Friday morning, he said he would not re-contest the seat or seek a list position with the National Party.”
Jumped, pushed, non selected, or can see the electoral writing on the wall?
"In June 2021, he announced he planned to retire from politics – but after Christopher Luxon took over the party leadership, he said he had decided to stay."
Maybe Christopher Luxon wasn't the White Knight he was hoping for after all.
Again, this is late in the piece for an MP to announce his retirement.
The BoP electorate committee will have already confirmed him as the National Candidate, and will now have to re-open selection.
His letter does indicate (well, at least to me) that there are pressure issues in the role, which, following his breakdown, he just can't be confident he can manage. He acknowledges that it will be a tough election campaign (who would expect otherwise), and that he just doesn't have the capacity and stamina to put in the effort needed.
While it's good to have that level of self-awareness – it would have been better for the party and his electorate, if he'd had it last October or November.
Todd retired, then unretired when his God squadder buddy boy got the top banana role and he thought they might win the election, now he's had a revelation in a conversation with a snake at his happy clappy church and re-resigned again.
to paraphrase Monty Python,
When electoral danger reared it's ugly head, Sir Todd bravely turned his tail and fled. Yes, brave Sir Todd has turned about and gallantly he has chickened out.
According to Mr Luxon, Todd has a "world-class brain" (at about 3:00 min in this NZ herald video) – which is why he appointed Todd to a shadow role in cyclone recovery. It is a shame if someone with a world-class brain sees no future for themselves in the current National Party. Other thoughts come to mind though:
maybe even a world-class brain doesn't save you from the mental horror show of politics?
is the most revealing thing that Mr Luxon is so conceited that he is claiming to have the ability to detect the presence or absence of world class brains?
and why does Mr Luxon disembody the brain as the most important political organ – as though politics was just the technocratic function of 'delivering' (something) without any ethical consideration of what gets delivered and why?
I respect Todd Muller for the way he has handled himself since his breakdown and resignation from the leadership.
We've seen MPs suffer health problems, take leave and come back, but it's usually physical health, like cancer (Nikki Kaye, Kiri Allen). The stigma attached to mental health makes it harder.
Muller has been honest about it – this is a moving and important interview, from Stuff in 2021:
It should not be either/or: you're always fine, or you're not up to the job. He has made a contribution to improved understanding and empathy on mental health issues, and deserves credit for that.
All for six weeks of extra hydro water supply which would then take two years to refill.
Citation please. Which means a quote, and explanation and a link. The onus is on you to provide evidence and argument not expect people to read an article and parse your meaning.
If the Lake Onslow scheme goes ahead, the artificially-expanded lake high in the hills of Central Otago would in effect provide a massive battery with a charge equivalent to the total amount of power the entire country uses in six weeks, that could be drawn down when needed.
The first sentence above "Lake Onslow is already a man made lake it would take between four and five years to build and a further two years to fill." was a quote from the previously linked article.
Thanks. Citation still needed for the idea that the intention is to use up the whole storage and then wait 2 years for it to refill.
I'm not an engineer nor a hydro bod, but my understanding is that they will use the battery to produce power on an as needed basis when the hydro lakes are low. I cannot imaging they will run the battery dry. The hydro lakes don't run out of power completely, which is what would need to happen in your scenario of powering the whole country for six weeks just from Onslow.
If the full capacity is not planned to be used why is it so big?
Without doubt it is a slow fill/quick empty device. So that even if a smaller proportion is used the refill will be slow and intersected with another draw-down further emptying the lake. Eventually emptying it or only using a small part of the capacity.A LOT of land will be flooded just to use the top bit of water.
I do remember "Damn the Dam said the Fantail" ……… or is this 'different'?
Still does not explain why a $20 Billion asset will just sit there just in case it is dry from time to time justifies the destruction of an Iconic landscape and destroying the locals farms.
I get it – Farmers can be sacrificed for urban ease?
Your numbers make no sense…but that aside…it is not just farmers that stand to benefit from (i agree) an expensive project…ultimately the country must secure its energy production and as has been noted, this appears to be the most possible method.
Many may not like it, but our ag production is what enables our current existence…and until such time as we develop an alternative (offers please?) thats what we have.
It's to cover peak load times and will recharge constantly, hopefully it'll enable all coal fired milk drying facilities and coal backup generation to be mothballed.
"In a valley in southern Switzerland, the striking steel and concrete prototype from Energy Vault, another leader in the gravity battery space, stands more than 20 stories tall. When green power supply exceeds demand, one of several AI-controlled cranes lifts a pair of 30-tonne blocks upwards. When demand outstrips supply, back down they go, generating enough energy for thousands of homes..
….Think of it as a warehouse of [1000s of] energy elevators…When clean electricity is coming in, the blocks – made of recycled material – go up, and when the grid needs supply, they go back down. An EVx with a storage capacity of 100MWh can power around 25,000 homes for a day.'
Each installation's size and layout will determine its overall storage capacity, but even at the lower end, the buildings will cover dozens of acres. Could this be problematic? No, Piconi says, as the systems are likely to be situated near wind and solar farms far from urban centres…'Basically anywhere you can construct a 20-storey building will work,' he says."
To my thinking, it doesn't have to be one giant facility at the generation site. Smaller-scale storage could be built around NZ to reduce the need for peak-load coal-fired stations.
At the start of the article, gravity batteries are suggested as an alternative to pumping water back up to the storage lake of a hydropower station when demand is low. That's what sparked my interest initially. I didn't realise Lake Onslow will be for medium-term storage, but thought it was part of a repumping system. Gravity batteries clearly won’t work at that scale; my claims of scaleability were fantasy, sorry.
" I didn't realise Lake Onslow will be for medium-term storage., but thought it was part of a repumping system."
As I understand the proposal Onslow is to be used as a variable sink to enable the intermittent renewable production WHILE providing a back up store of energy in the event of a dry year….most of the alternatives dont provide that flexibility (though theoretically elevated weights could but as noted that is essentially what Onslow is)…even nuclear dosnt provide that flexibility even if we overlook the other issues.
I don't think the caldera is pertinent. Given Fukashima, the whole Tsunami palaver would need addressing. But it doesn't have to be there, that was just an idea.
Supprizez me that noone talks about tidal generators tide comes in tide goes out round and round every day of the year regardless and we cant harness that force ??Why ?
Whatever your opinion about the ppsd lake Onslow 'chance would be a fine thing' is my response to the good sense idea from Hon Megan Wood of parties working together.
National does not do whole of Govt approaches, well rarely, as we found with the response to the pandemic. As I have said before it was one of the most shocking times for me, as I waited for Simon Bridges to cross the floor to stand with the PM as she announced that NZ was facing a pandemic and we faced unprecedented times. I still feel the sinking feeling when I realised the pandemic was going to be a party political issue.
Woods voiced hope at a select committee that the investment decision could transcend party politics.
“This is a very serious, long-term asset that we'd be talking about. The prudent thing is we have to find a solution and we have to do this in a rigorous and methodical way that I think takes the politics out of it,” she said.
But National Party energy spokesperson Stuart Smith suggested the idea Lake Onslow might go ahead was “tone deaf in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis” and National would immediately cancel the business case if it won the election.
He said Lake Onslow was “a return to the bad old days of expensive government investment in a well-functioning electricity market” and said last week that any solution to the dry-year problem could be left to the market to deliver.
I guess it would be too much to have expected working together with such right wing drollery such as Stuart Smith's
well-functioning electricity market
left to the market to deliver.
In contrast to those who know
Waikato University professor Earl Bardsley, who first identified the potential of the natural rock basin at Lake Otago to create an artificial lake, said the business case for the scheme would need to take a “wide view of the national benefits”, given the cost.
That could include the economic gain from electricity being cheaper than it otherwise would be, and the general advantages of the green transition, he said.
Be a bit careful there about interpreting Bridges's non-support over the pandemic in Parliament. I read somewhere at the time that National had approached Labour to offer bipartisan support. (Sorry, went hunting, but couldn't find the news article). My memory suggests a hint of let's plan this together, ie we want to share in political visibility over pandemic management.
I wondered at the time why Ardern turned National down (a sense of flatly?). Perhaps managing compromise with Peters was enough work already; or perhaps Peters himself turned it down. So I interpret the no vote of support from Bridges as payback for be8ng shut out.
Now, with the coronavirus presenting another opportunity to unite New Zealand's largest political parties against a mutual enemy, Bridges told Magic Talk's Peter Williams he's open to the idea.
"A lot of people are saying those sort of things to me," he said of suggestions that he and deputy National leader Paula Bennett could join the government.
"We've heard [Finance Minister and Labour MP] Grant Robertson, among others, say [we need to implement] a wartime-type response.
"I can't answer your question clearly today, other than to say when the facts change, I change.
"We've got an openness to supporting and assisting here as we see something we've never seen before in New Zealand, certainly in my lifetime."
I have heard after the event that this is what happened, ie that an offer was made, but I was thinking of something far more spontaneous and that was to get up and cross the floor during or after the announcement. Very much like on a marae people will get up and cluster to support a speaker. Often not so much for exactly what they have said but for the fact that they have got up and said something.
Even if nothing had happened then and there and it was left to politics the offer was there and the people of NZ could have seen that this unprecedented happening was a problem for united NZ not party political NZ.
Shanreagh, I only mentioned National's bipartisan offer being turned down by the Coalition because you followed National's lack of pandemic support in Parliament with a claim they have a general resistance to bipartisan planning.
Sorry I don't understand……National tends to have the approach of being anti most things unless they have thought of it themselves. They are generally not reflective about what might happen in the future and generally act as if everything issue in life involves a political approach ie left or right.
I have discussed issues with enough Nats and Nat type supporters over many years to know that they believe just about everything in life has a political spin or approach to it.
I gave an example of this by the quote 'and National would immediately cancel the business case if it won the election.' So nothing that says would review, reconsider……just cancel fullstop.
I instanced the pandemic announcement as being a case in point, afterwards and with reflection they may have said they were going to work with the govt. PM gave them a task of formally peer reviewing/adopting a steering committee approach.
They could not do this, Bridges made it all about how he needed to breach lockdown by travelling to Wellington so he could address the media. Did he even adopt a careful and helpful approach to this task. No.
So the recent-ish moment when they could have taken a whole of govt approach brought out their tendency to do a left/right oppositional stance.
There is more to policy making than just being opposed to what the last person suggested. National's policy approach shows that just being contrary is a major way they 'do' policy.
I mentioned the pandemic announcement as that was top of my mind when looking at their cancel, cancel, cancel approach to Lake Onslow. It was the very reason Hon Megan Woods did this shot over the bows and that was to bring forward the expected sterile response of cancel and the market does everything wonderfully well and if it needed doing the market would have done it.
Hopefully Megan Woods will keep saying these things about working together so that it will get through Nats noggins that some issues would be better with everyone talking rather than trying to put a left right spin on everything that walks.
Thanks for your thoughtful and informative expansion, Shanreagh. I think there is likely to be an even bigger divide now, after National were happy enough to glide in the wake of the anti-Ardern movement.
It is worse than that. The guy is a complete moron.
Wayne Donnelly, @AklTransport chair, to @AklCouncil: If we don't remake Great North Rd for safe cycling, etc, where would we do it? Crunch time at council right now. The mayor says riding on Williamson Ave and the footpaths works well for him. Also, how can we make it cheaper?
Surely the Mayor can be responsible for cleaning his own office. As can the senior executive team. They can form a roster for cleaning the staff room and toilets. All outside work hours of course, this can be entirely 'voluntary'!
How about all of the people who holding stop/go signs on the roadworks. Surely this is an 'unqualified' job that could easily be done by volunteers.
[All sarcasm, intentional]
And, just in case he's missed the fact that we have a cost-of-living crisis. There are not limitless wells of volunteer time out there – just waiting to be tapped. People need an actual paying job to survive in Auckland (and often need more than one)
All of the charities which depend on volunteers, have been saying for at least the last decade that their volunteer support is drying up – as people simply don't have the free time any longer. And that's for organizations where you donate time to accomplish a charity goal – not for something that you already pay for in your rates.
If Mayor Brown wants to argue to close libraries, or reduce opening hours – then that's one conversation. But claiming that you can continue to run a library service with volunteer staff is quite another.
Actually, the libraries which 'could' be argued to be unnecessary (heavy overlap in a small geographical area) – are the ones in the heritage boroughs of Auckland (Remuera, Parnell and Epsom Libraries, for example). Which all have highly motivated and wealthy usergroups who will fight to the death for their local library (and have done so, in the past)
Just thinking more about the East Cape slash problem.
As I understand it, the law of nuisance says you cannot use your land in a way that causes damage to the property of others by letting something dangerous escape.
So far, landowners have relied on the council to prosecute forestry companies, but farmers whose land is covered in logs would seem to have a cause of action in the courts, ie a private lawsuit, for the damage they have suffered.
A NZ case is Double J Smallwoods Ltd v Gisborne District Council, 13 June 2017 (fire spread because of pampas and scrub on the council's land).
Probably too hard for farmers to contemplate that sort of thing right now though.
For us horoscope watchers, welcome to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius:
"The rise of [Social Media Misinformation] has corresponded to a modern transition to the information age, where information itself has become a productive force."
More seriously, the source article for this quote nails the societal effects of misinformation spread through social media.
Having close friends who, variously, have swallowed The Great Replacement racism, Jordan Petersen's anti-woman dross, and RT News lies about Russia's actions in Ukraine, I can only shake my head, button my lip around them, and wonder what poisoned bait I personally have succumbed to.
I've spent very little time on Peterson, but is it anti woman to point out that men are the ones out there doing the big hours in the shitty conditions getting squashed burnt and broken building and repairing, and delivering and getting very little recognition for it.
Go to a gas station a 5 am, it's all men in high vis with calloused hands or driving trucks, (occasionally a woman but predominantly men)
It probably is, however, anti-woman to refrain from pointing out that women are the ones doing the big hours in low-wage jobs, with little hope of promotion.
And the ones, overwhelmingly, doing the unpaid 'work' that keeps the family running.
As a society, we undervalue 'women's work' – to an even greater extent than we undervalue blue collar work.
Check out the night-cleaning staff – overwhelmingly women (with the occasional man invariably a recent immigrant).
The easy answer to earthquake risk for reactors is to build them on vessels. These can be largely stationary, but are portable for refit or scrapping, and circumvent some of the permitting issues land-based reactors might have.
Of course it would have been better had certain epic morons not boosted our population beyond the capacity of significant infrastructure, but we must play the hand those blithering idiots have dealt us.
Auckland cannot build so much as a cycleway without pissing away tens of millions, but a reactor generator vessel can be built by a country that has not traded in their engineers for dysfunctional bureaucrats, and has a sporting chance of actually working.
It's not a perfect defense – but large ships are rarely damaged by the great waves, Their destructive effect is a consequence of rapidly shallowing water – get a bit of water under your keel and you experience them as a simple swell.
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Stuart Nash, the great-grandson of former Prime Minister Sir Walter Nash, has lost his political career. File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Stuart Nash was sacked for telling donors what happened in Cabinet. Wellington’s City and Regional Councils are going cold on light rail plans. Wayne Brown is under ...
NZ First Leader Winston Peters is sympathising with Stuart Nash and defending him but dodging questions on whether he would be welcome in New Zealand First. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins last night sacked Nash from the Cabinet after an email he had sent to two of his campaign donors ...
So, after interfering with the police, and then interfering with immigration decisions, Stuart Nash has finally been sacked: Stuart Nash has been sacked as a minister, after Stuff revealed he had emailed business figures, including donors, detailing private Cabinet discussions. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed the people Nash emailed ...
Nearly 25% of mortgages in Auckland are deemed at risk in a 1-in-100 year flood event. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Once a year, every year, from now on, in our not-so-slow-cooking climate crisis, there will be a moment when the most important number in Aotearoa’s own personal, national ...
Item One: About a confected crisis Please bear with me for a moment, readers outside Auckland, I wish to sound the klaxon. Auckland, we have until 11pm today to have our say. About what? About this, as copied and pasted from Pippa Coom’s Facebook page:The "austerity" budget is built on ...
Buzz from the Beehive Yet again, the statement we were looking for could not be found on the Beehive website. Nor was it on the Scoop or Green Party websites. But – come to think of it – we are probably wasting our time by searching. Our quest is for the ...
The following is from a speech given by Arundhati Roy at the Swedish Academy on March 22, 2023, at a conference called Thought and Truth Under Pressure and reprinted from Literary Hub. I thank the Swedish Academy for inviting me to speak at this conference and for affording me the privilege ...
After almost two decades of racism, Australia is finally getting off its "stop the boats" bullshit. But don't worry, racists - Michael Wood has your back!The Government wants to increase the time it can detain without a warrant people seeking asylum en masse from four days to 28 ...
Last year, the Education and Workforce Committee recommended that the government legislate for pay transparency to prevent employers from secretly discriminating. This ought to be a bread and butter issue for Labour - discrimination sees women (and particularly Māori and Pasifika women) paid significantly less than men. But since then ...
Thomas Cranmer writes – ———— An unruly mob in Albert Park has catapulted New Zealand into the global headlines with ugly images that may become iconic in the debate about the dangers of transgenderism. ———— Bravo Kellie-Jay Keen. She did the job that needed to be done. For all the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global warming is melting the Arctic ice cap, and that’s having unforeseen effects on the world’s weather — even thousands of miles away from the North Pole. Some climate scientists have begun to link increasingly common heat waves in Europe to what is ...
Hot on the heels of the demotion of former police Minister Stuart Nash for breaching the Cabinet Manual, Radio New Zealand has revealed the close links between lobbyists and politicians- an area of New Zealand politics that is completely unregulated. The evidence in Guyon Espiner’s series Mate, Comrade, Brother, the ...
At the Auckland Transport board meeting today a series of papers really highlight the cost of sprawl. For the last few years, the Supporting Growth work has been looking at designing the strategic transport networks for future greenfield areas in the South, Northwest, North (around Dairy flat) and in Warkworth. ...
Over a million New Zealanders will receive a little extra to help with the cost of living as a result of our 1 April changes. Around the world, inflation is causing costs to rise and we’re feeling it here at home. In tough times, we need to support those who ...
With benefit changes coming into effect tomorrow, the Green Party is calling on the Government to lift benefits to liveable levels to make sure everyone has what they need to thrive. ...
Following decades of work by the Green Party alongside the organics sector, people will finally be able to be confident that products labelled organic have met standards. ...
The Green Party supports immediate Government action to close the pay gap as called for in an open letter released today by the Human Rights Commission and 50 other organisations. ...
The Green Party is today welcoming the release of the Government’s waste strategy, but says it has a big gap without action on the container return scheme for beverage containers. ...
The Government’s decision to introduce ‘mass arrivals’ legislation goes against the values we all share of Aotearoa as a place where all people are treated fairly, the Green Party says. ...
MINISTER DAVIDSON MUST RESIGN AFTER 'VIOLENCE' COMMENTS Marama Davidson should stand down as ‘Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence’ for the clear and outrageous statement she made at the Posie Parker protest that ‘white straight men’ are the cause of violence. Her offensive, racist, and sexist remarks ...
In response to Newshub and Amelia Wade’s obvious and ham-fisted attempt at a typical and predicted political hit job. As any politically aware reporter would know, any Cabinet subcommittee has a duty and obligation as a part of any government to respond to any UN declaration, in this case ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to speak with you today and in your busy lives turning up to this meeting. Forty five years ago, in Howick, often described as racist, and where few Maori lived because it had been a ‘Fencible’ settlement at the time of the Anglo-Maori ...
The Green Party has marked the National Party’s new education policy and given it a fail, especially for its failure to address the underlying drivers of school performance. ...
“This is it; 2023 will be the last opportunity New Zealand has to get a government that will confront the climate emergency with the urgency it demands,” says the Green Party’s co-leader and climate change spokesperson, James Shaw. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised in their State of the Planet speech today. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party after the election must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised today. ...
You will never truly understand, from the pictures you’ve seen in the newspapers or on the six o-clock news, the sheer scale of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle. ...
We’re boosting incomes and helping ease cost of living pressures on Kiwis through a range of bread and butter support measures that will see pensioners, students, families, and those on main benefits better off from the start of next month. ...
The error Labour Ministers made by stopping work on a beverage container return scheme will be reversed by the Greens at the earliest opportunity as part of the next Government. ...
“Cabinet needs to do better - and today has shown exactly why we need Green Ministers in cabinet, so we can prioritise action to cut climate pollution and support people to make ends meet,” says Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson. ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, departs for Europe today, where she will attend a session of the NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels and make a short bilateral visit to Sweden. “NATO is a long-standing and likeminded partner for Aotearoa New Zealand. It is valuable to join a session of ...
A secure facility that will house protected information for a broad range of government agencies is being constructed at RNZAF Base Auckland (Whenuapai), Public Service, Defence and GCSB Minister Andrew Little says. The facility will consolidate and expand the government’s current secure storage capacity and capability for at least another ...
From today, 1.8 million flu vaccines are available to help protect New Zealanders from winter illness, Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall has announced. “Vaccination against flu is safe and will be a first line of defence against severe illness this winter,” Dr Verrall said. “We can all play a part ...
Associate Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage Willow-Jean Prime has congratulated Professor Rangi Mātāmua (Ngāi Tūhoe) who was last night named the prestigious Te Pou Whakarae o Aotearoa New Zealander of the Year. Professor Mātāmua, who is the government's Chief Adviser Mātauranga Matariki, was the winner of the New Zealander ...
The Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta has announced further sanctions on political and military figures from Russia and Belarus as part of the ongoing response to the war in Ukraine. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova ...
A new public housing development planned for Whangārei will provide 95 warm and dry, modern homes for people in need, Housing Minister Megan Woods says. The Kauika Road development will replace a motel complex in the Avenues with 89 three-level walk up apartments, alongside six homes. “Whangārei has a rapidly ...
New Zealand welcomes the substantial conclusion of negotiations on the United Kingdom’s accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Trade and Export Growth Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. “Continuing to grow our export returns is a priority for the Government and part of our plan to ...
Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and the Crown initial Taranaki Maunga collective redress deed Ngā Iwi o Taranaki and the Crown have today initialled the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Deed, named Te Ruruku Pūtakerongo, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little says. “I am pleased to be here for this ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Barbara Edmonds has announced the 2023 Pacific Language week series, highlighting the need to revitalise and sustain languages for future generations. “Pacific languages are a cornerstone of our health, wellbeing and identity as Pacific peoples. When our languages are spoken, heard and celebrated, our communities thrive,” ...
880,000 pensioners to get a boost to Super, including 5000 veterans 52,000 students to see a bump in allowance or loan living costs Approximately 223,000 workers to receive a wage rise as a result of the minimum wage increasing to $22.70 8,000 community nurses to receive pay increase of up ...
Over 8000 community nurses will start receiving well-deserved pay rises of up to 15 percent over the next month as a Government initiative worth $200 million a year kicks in, says Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall. “The Government is committed to ensuring nurses are paid fairly and will receive ...
Tākiri mai ana te ata Ki runga o ngākau mārohirohi Kōrihi ana te manu kaupapa Ka ao, ka ao, ka awatea Tihei mauri ora Let the dawn break On the hearts and minds of those who stand resolute As the bird of action sings, it welcomes the dawn of a ...
The Government is introducing a scheme which will lift incomes for artists, support them beyond the current spike in cost of living and ensure they are properly recognised for their contribution to New Zealand’s economy and culture. “In line with New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement with the UK, last ...
New Zealand is welcoming a decision by the United Nations General Assembly to ask the International Court of Justice to consider countries’ international legal obligations on climate change. The United Nations has voted unanimously to adopt a resolution led by Vanuatu to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion on ...
More Police officers are being deployed to the frontline with the graduation of 59 new constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. “The graduation for recruit wing 364 was my first since becoming Police Minister last week,” Ginny Andersen said. “It was a real honour. I want to ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta met with Vanuatu Foreign Minister Jotham Napat in Port Vila, today, signing a new Statement of Partnership — Aotearoa New Zealand’s first with Vanuatu. “The Mauri Statement of Partnership is a joint expression of the values, priorities and principles that will guide the Aotearoa New Zealand–Vanuatu relationship into ...
The Government has passed new legislation amending the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) levy regime, ensuring the best balance between a fair and cost effective funding model. The Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill makes changes to the existing law to: charge the levy on contracts of ...
The Government has passed the Organic Products and Production Bill through its third reading today in Parliament helping New Zealand’s organic sector to grow and lift export revenue. “The Organic Products and Production Bill will introduce robust and practical regulation to give businesses the certainty they need to continue to ...
The Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill, which will make it easier for New Zealanders to safely prove who they are digitally has passed its third and final reading today. “We know New Zealanders want control over their identity information and how it’s used by the companies and services they ...
The full Cyclone Gabrielle Recovery Taskforce has met formally for the first time as work continues to help the regions recover and rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle. The Taskforce, which includes representatives from business, local government, iwi and unions, covers all regions affected by the January and February floods and cyclone. ...
Changes have been made to legislation to give subcontractors the confidence they will be paid the retention money they are owed should the head contractor’s business fail, Minister for Building and Construction Megan Woods announced today. “These changes passed in the Construction Contracts (Retention Money) Amendment Act safeguard subcontractors who ...
Transport Minister Michael Wood has unveiled five scenarios for one of the most significant city-shaping projects for Tāmaki Makaurau in coming decades, the additional Waitematā Harbour crossing. “Aucklanders and businesses have made it clear that the biggest barriers to the success of Auckland is persistent congestion and after years of ...
The Government has passed new legislation that ensures New Zealand’s civil aviation rules are fit for purpose in the 21st century, Associate Transport Minister Kiri Allan says. The Civil Aviation Bill repeals and replaces the Civil Aviation Act 1990 and the Airport Authorities Act 1966 with a single modern law ...
A Bill aimed at helping to reduce delays in the coronial jurisdiction passed its third reading today. The Coroners Amendment Bill, amongst other things, will establish new coronial positions, known as Associate Coroners, who will be able to perform most of the functions, powers, and duties of Coroners. The new ...
The Prime Minister has asked the Cabinet Secretary to conduct a review into communications between Stuart Nash and his donors. The review will take place over the next two months. The review will look at whether there have been any other breaches of cabinet collective responsibility or confidentiality, or whether ...
The new Recovery Visa to help bring in additional migrant workers to support cyclone and flooding recovery has attracted over 600 successful applicants within its first month. “The Government is moving quickly to support businesses bring in the workers needed to recover from Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland floods,” Michael ...
Bills to ensure non-teaching employees and contractors at schools, and unlicensed childcare services like mall crèches are vetted by police, and provide safeguards for school board appointments have passed their first reading today. The Education and Training Amendment Bill (No. 3) and the Regulatory Systems (Education) Amendment Bill have now ...
Wānanga will gain increased flexibility and autonomy that recognises the unique role they fill in the tertiary education sector, Associate Minister of Education Kelvin Davis has announced. The Education and Training Amendment Bill (No.3), that had its first reading today, proposes a new Wānanga enabling framework for the three current ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta will travel to Vanuatu today, announcing that Aotearoa New Zealand will provide further relief and recovery assistance there, following the recent destruction caused by Cyclones Judy and Kevin. While in Vanuatu, Minister Mahuta will meet with Vanuatu Acting Prime Minister Sato Kilman, Foreign Minister Jotham ...
The Government is backing Police and making communities safer with the roll-out of state-of-the-art tools and training to frontline staff, Police Minister Ginny Andersen said today. “Frontline staff face high-risk situations daily as they increasingly respond to sophisticated organised crime, gang-violence and the availability of illegal firearms,” Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government has provided Police with more tools to crack down on gang offending with the passing of new legislation today which will further improve public safety, Justice Minister Kiri Allan says. The Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill amends existing law to: create new targeted warrant and additional search powers ...
The Government today announced far-reaching changes to the way we make, use, recycle and dispose of waste, ushering in a new era for New Zealand’s waste system. The changes will ensure that where waste is recycled, for instance by households at the kerbside, it is less likely to be contaminated ...
New legislation passed by the Government today will make it harder for gangs and their leaders to benefit financially from crime that causes considerable harm in our communities, Minister of Justice Kiri Allan says. Since the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009 came into effect police have been highly successful in ...
This evening I have advised the Governor-General to dismiss Stuart Nash from all his ministerial portfolios. Late this afternoon I was made aware by a news outlet of an email Stuart Nash sent in March 2020 to two contacts regarding a commercial rent relief package that Cabinet had considered. In ...
Legislation to enable more build-to-rent developments has passed its third reading in Parliament, so this type of rental will be able to claim interest deductibility in perpetuity where it meets the requirements. Housing Minister Dr Megan Woods, says the changes will help unlock the potential of the build-to-rent sector and ...
A law passed by Parliament today exempts employers from paying fringe benefit tax on certain low emission commuting options they provide or subsidise for their staff. “Many employers already subsidise the commuting costs of their staff, for instance by providing car parks,” Environment Minister David Parker said. “This move supports ...
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Closer Economic Relations (CER), our gold standard free trade agreement between New Zealand and Australia. “CER was a world-leading agreement in 1983, is still world-renowned today and is emblematic of both our countries’ commitment to free trade. The WTO has called it the world’s ...
The Government is making procedural changes to the Immigration Act to ensure that 2013 amendments operate as Parliament intended. The Government is also introducing a new community management approach for asylum seekers. “While it’s unlikely we’ll experience a mass arrival due to our remote positioning, there is no doubt New ...
The Government welcomes progress on public sector pay adjustment (PSPA) agreements, and the release of the updated public service pay guidance by the Public Service Commission today, Minister for the Public Service Andrew Little says. “More than a dozen collective agreements are now settled in the public service, Crown Agents, ...
The Government has introduced the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill to further support the recovery and rebuild from the recent severe weather events in the North Island. “We know from our experiences following the Canterbury and Kaikōura earthquakes that it will take some time before we completely understand the ...
Tea drinkers of Aotearoa, your new favourite dunking bikkie is here. There are several things I love about this recipe. The first is that they make a delicious dunking biscuit, the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea shared with friends. The second is that the recipe is ...
Part two of writer Marty Smith’s reporting from her flood-damaged home.Read part one here. Sunday 12 March, 21 days after the floods.Google Maps shows a pale blue line for the flat-lined bridge between Taradale and Waiohiki and sends you instead over the Expressway to Merge Like A Zip, ...
Bard Billot on the booted out broadcasterSpartans, prepare for glory! The hardy army of Today FM Spartans Camps out on the harsh lands of talk radio. The long months of the campaign Have worn down their resolve, For though they have loyally broadcast Their snappy banter and hot ...
The danger of National's policy is that it undoes much of an informal pact with Labour to depoliticise education at a time of real struggleOpinion: The National Party’s recently released education policy narrowly channels nearly every tired and cliched right-wing approach to schooling. If you have been in education for ...
A refurbished, expanded and more earthquake-proof building is a still few years away. Can it live up to the impeccable postmodernist vibes of its predecessor?A long time ago, my non-Wellington then-boyfriend was visiting the windy city and asked the barber what he recommended in town. “Dunno mate,” the barber ...
Doing the cryptic crossword isn’t simply a hobby. It’s a way of life, a love affair – even a full-blown obsession. The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Illustrations by Asia Martusia King. Clue: Mafia boss consumed first dish free of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The rout of the Liberals in Aston is a disaster for Peter Dutton. The party has defied history – in the worst possible way. This is the first time in more than a century ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Morgan Hancock/AAP With 44% of enrolled voters counted in today’s Aston federal byelection, the ABC has Labor expected to win ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Morgan Hancock/AAP With 44% of enrolled voters counted in today’s Aston federal byelection, the ABC has Labor expected to win ...
Analysis - When is a cabinet minister not a cabinet minister? The faulty logic of Stuart Nash has landed him and Labour in a heap of trouble but opened the door to serious reform of the Official Information Act, Tim Watkin writes. ...
Jubi News in Jayapura Indonesia’s Papua police chief Inspector-General Mathius D Fakhiri has called for action to ensure that “security disturbances” in the Puncak Jaya highlands do not widen in the face of escalating attacks by pro-independence militants. “For Puncak, we will take immediate action,” he said. According to General ...
What are you going to be watching this month? We round up everything coming to streaming services this month, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Neon and TVNZ+. The biggies Party Down (all seasons on TVNZ+ from April 1) Thirteen years is a long time between drinks and ...
Ginny Andersen has landed a hot-potato portfolio and has been in Cabinet less than two months - the opposition will be eager to test her mettle this election year. ...
The executive producer of Modern Family has issued an incendiary claim about New Zealanders cheering and clapping in public. Hayden Donnell gets to the bottom of things.The sitcom Modern Family is remembered as a “warm-hearted story about the unbreakable bonds of family”; a tale of radically different people overcoming ...
As rain kept falling across January, February and into March, all band members cold do was sit at home cancelling festivals and posting sad Facebook messages to fans. The first post landed on January 3. As wild weather began hitting the country, campers around Northland packed up their tents ...
Because pro-social behaviour emerges so often after disaster, community empowerment should be central to disaster mitigation and recoveryOpinion: Cyclone Gabrielle caused major damage across the North Island. This unprecedented climate event created great uncertainty. People are wondering if, or when, they can return to their homes, the extent to ...
"We, women, loving you; you, men, finding new women to love": a Francophile love story in NZ Louis woke up and found out Marine was not lying next to him in bed. He checked his phone – 5:30am. The aurora shone a bright gold on the windows of the detached ...
Every weekday, The Detail makes sense of the big news stories. This week, we looked at how co-governance really works, Labour's record on climate action, what the new AUKUS nuclear submarine deal means for New Zealand, Posie Parker's visit to Auckland and the free speech debate, and the damage processed foods are ...
The radio workers were caught by the unexpected speed of the decline of NZ's consumer economy, since Christmas – and they won't be the last. Jonathan Milne reports. When broadcaster Tova O’Brien uttered the resounding words, "they’ve f***ed us", they resonated beyond the 1 percent audience share of a small talk radio operation ...
A New Zealand Battery Project centred on Lake Onslow in Central Otago is up against a cheaper North Island alternative Studies into whether a massive pumped-hydro scheme at Lake Onslow is New Zealand’s best bet for a secure energy future may have only four more months to run. While the ...
This is The Detail's Long Read - one in-depth story read by us every weekend. This week, it's Jungle Warfare, written by Ellen Rykers and published in New Zealand Geographic's March/April 2023 edition. You can find the full article, with photos by Adrian Malloch, here. Hundreds of pest plant species—many of them garden escapees—run rampant in ...
The Red, White & Brass star talks spectacle, honouring family sacrifices and his debut lead role over a Tongan lunch in Otāhuhu.Name a creative pursuit and 28-year-old Tongan New Zealander John-Paul Foliaki will give it a go. That is, if he hasn’t already. Foliaki plays the lead role, Maka, ...
To mark 100 years since the great short story writer’s death, books editor Claire Mabey marathonned her collected works – these are the top 20.Reader, I did it. I read all of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. Confession: I haven’t always been a fan. I have tedious memories of ...
In her first season as an ANZ Premiership captain, Ameliaranne Ekenasio was nervous about filling the shoes of the legendary Magic captains before her. But, as Merryn Anderson writes, the quiet leader has the full respect of the side who voted her in. When the Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic created history ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Ordway, Associate Professor Sport Management and Sport Integrity Lead, University of Canberra Lawyers for Australian 800-metre star Peter Bol say allegations the runner engaged in doping should be dropped after two independent labs found no evidence he used a banned substance. ...
Vanuatu’s Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Trading Post Ltd, the owner of the VanuatuDaily Post newspaper, BUZZ FM96 and other media outlets, in a case against the government’s refusal to renew the company’s former media director’s work permit. Dan McGarry, who served as a director of the ...
Balclutha-based farmer Stephen Jack has been selected by local party members as National’s candidate in Taieri for the 2023 General Election. “Taieri is my home and I’m incredibly excited to have the opportunity to campaign for a National Government ...
Analysis - The Stuart Nash scandal has the potential to damage Labour's election chances, Marama Davidson creates controversy and Auckland's second harbour crossing to be built earlier than expected. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare JM Burns, Assistant Professor and Non-executive Director, Bond University Shutterstock The story of the Aboriginal Community Benefit Fund, whose name and marketing misled thousands of customers into believing it was Indigenous owned and run, is a stark example of ...
It’s the biannual reminder to tamper with that pesky analogue clock you still have in your kitchen for some reason (or at the least your microwave/car stereo). This Sunday at 3am, we will all gain an hour of sleep as the clocks roll back ahead of winter. Get ready for ...
The chief ombudsman has elected to reopen his investigation into an email from former minister Stuart Nash to a pair of donors back in 2020. The email, which only came to light this week, quickly triggered Nash’s dismissal from cabinet. But in bad news for the prime minister Chris Hipkins, ...
Last week we celebrated The Bulletin’s fifth birthday with Spinoff members and staff at The Spinoff’s offices in Auckland. The Bulletin launched in March 2018 seeking to curate news and great journalism and email that to people for free each weekday morning. That hasn’t changed and it’s still going strong. ...
The biggest increase in the history of the minimum wage will have a huge impact for workers on low wages, says the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. From tomorrow, the minimum wage will rise to $22.70, up from $21.20. This increase will benefit ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Siemens, Co-Director, Professor, Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning, University of South Australia agsandrew/Shutterstock Recent public interest in tools like ChatGPT has raised an old question in the artificial intelligence community: is artificial general intelligence (in this case, ...
Auckland’s wet summer is delivering one final blow just in time for the weekend. The Synthony festival, due to be held on Saturday at Auckland Domain and featuring performances by Shapeshifter, Dave Dobbyn and Kimbra, has been postponed following predictions of heavy rainfall across the day. More than 20,000 people ...
We would like to see a temporary by-pass of the major slip on State Highway 25A built to alleviate the concerns of the residents of the Eastern Side of Coromandel. Cyclone Gabrielle inflicted substantial damage to roading on the Coromandel Peninsula. ...
Alex Casey watches Wellmania, the new Netflix comedy starring Instagram sensation Celeste Barber. The lowdownBased on the book by journalist Brigid Delaney, Netflix comedy Wellmania follows successful yet shambolic Australian food writer Liv Bealey (Celeste Barber) as she embarks on a quest to get well as quickly as possible. ...
The Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier says he has reopened his investigation into an Official Information Act complaint about a decision by former Minister Stuart Nash. "The original enquiry was discontinued in May last year in discussion with the ...
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa (NZNO) has welcomed this morning’s Government announcement to address pay disparities in the nursing and kaiāwhina workforces from 1 April. NZNO Chief Executive Paul ...
Don’t let broccoli’s virtuous goody two-shoes reputation put you off – these verdant and versatile florets make the perfect addition to tray bakes, salads, soups and more.I reckon broccoli’s “superfood” status has given it a bit of a bad reputation. Because it’s so healthy (and reasonably inoffensive), its nutrients ...
A poem from Michele Leggott’s forthcoming book Face to the Sky. escher x nendo I hear you Eddie Woo coming clear across the galleries of intercochlear space you have the measure of these galaxies earthmeasure you have the measure of their difference earthmisia you translate one world artemisia and here ...
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.AUCKLAND1Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Doubleday, $26) The new, smaller format of Bonnie Garmus’ ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Blunden, Professor and Head of Paediatric Sleep Research, CQUniversity Australia ShutterstockWhat would happen to a person if they didn’t get the sleep they needed? Hedya, age 11, Australia This is a really good question Heyda, because it ...
Within hours of Duncan Garner telling listeners ‘It looks like the end of us’, the station’s website, social media and archives had been scrubbed from the internet.Right now across Auckland you can still see ads for Leo Molloy’s doomed mayoral campaign and electorate offices adorned with a smiling Jacinda ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has spoken more about the Stuart Nash email scandal at a media conference at the Manurewa RSA today, saying Nash has been "ultimately held accountable". ...
By Barbara Dreaver in Port Vila Vanuatu is in celebration mode after winning a significant battle on the world stage over climate change. In a United Nations resolution spearheaded by Vanuatu, the world’s top court will now advise on countries’ legal obligations to fight climate change. It also means the ...
By Jan Kohout, RNZ Pacific journalist New Caledonia’s Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) say they will tell the French Prime Minister of the Kanak people’s “sense of humiliation” over the last independence referendum. The pro-independence alliance is set to talk to the French state from April 7-15. The ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is visiting the Manurewa RSA meeting veterans who are among hundreds of thousands to receive higher payments from tomorrow. ...
This is an excerpt from The Spinoff’s pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up to have it delivered to your inbox every Friday here. If you want a middle-aged white man to play a disappointed-with-the-state-of-their-life middle-aged-white-man, you have two options: Jason Segel or Chris O’Dowd. Clearly, Segel was already busy ...
Over four million people have returned their Individual Forms for the 2023 Census, Stats NZ said today. “This is a great milestone. We didn’t hit this milestone until 30 April in the 2018 Census. I would like to thank everybody who has been counted ...
The government's recent announcement of five high carbon options for the next harbour crossing has disappointed those concerned about climate change. TRAC, a rail advocacy collective, opposes the short-sighted decision, citing the urgent need to reduce ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guzyal Hill, Senior Lecturer, Charles Darwin University Shutterstock Sunday will mark the end of the Daylight Saving Time (DST) in eastern Australia, but there are many who would like to see it last longer or permanently. Twice a year, New ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has launched a call for evidence to support its work on Aotearoa New Zealand’s emissions reduction targets and emissions budgets. This call for evidence is an opportunity for anyone to share information, data and ...
As the move to digital commerce continues, fraudsters are counting on consumers to let their guard down and to supply personal information. And according to new research released today by global payments technology company Visa (NYSE: V), which ...
On the other side to Sir Ed is the scene of one of our greatest conservation triumphs. Allison Hess explains.Stuffed into your wallet or passed across the till, the New Zealand $5 note circulates largely unobserved. But if you were to take a closer look at the ubiquitous burnt ...
The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) is asking for views on which overseas regulators it will draw on for some hazardous substance assessments and reassessments. The recognised international regulators must regulate hazardous substances in a similar ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Lecturer, RMIT University Alex Brandon/AP Events often seem inevitable in hindsight. The indictment of former US President Donald Trump on criminal charges has been a possibility since the start of his presidency – arguably, since close to the ...
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All good. About that Government support. Howabout ramping that up ! And looking at other options for the "Blue Highway". Are some kind of landing barge….shallow draught vessels a possible? for appropriate areas…of course.
And…maybe they were listening? # 1
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One of my hobbies is "how would we survive a zombie apocalypse in the rest of the world?"
Food isn't a problem, but distributing it is. You'd see a massive emptying out of anywhere not connected by sea for food transport. The government probably needs a "book" that contains everything we'd need to do to survive an apocalypse like a nuclear war or alien attack. A chapter in that book would be entitled "a simple design for a 120 ton wooden schooner".
Hi Sanctuary. Well….there still maybe still some Old School (and notso old : ) tradies that would be up for that.Of course, Apprentices needed ! We could use Native timber (Sustainable grown, as in replant !)
Really..it makes sense. IMO
Hang in there CRL team; downtown Auckland is back and buzzing in no small part due to completed CRL sections and waterfront rebuilds from 2019-20.
Keep the faith.
I am not an expert on big power projects (perhaps Advantage may have view? Nah, who am I kidding, of course he'll have a view
) by any stretch of the imagination, but I wonder if we are going to spend sixteen billion on pumped hydro to buy the country what is effectively a giant six week duration battery that is 1000km of vulnerable power lines from the main population centres then ought we not consider what else we might get for the money?
For example, sixteen billion might get us something like a 1200MW nuclear power station at Marsden point. That is four times the output of the Clutha high dam. It is a geologically stable area (although you'd have to mitigate the design for tsunamis) and it is less than 150km from Auckland and building it there would mean you don't have to significantly alter an area of natural beauty in the South Island, since the site is already used for heavy industry. The lifespan of these nuclear power stations is 80 odd years so the ROI would be comparable (as an aside, I'd love someone to do an ROI analysis of the Acqua Vergine, built in 19BC and still going strong) to pumped hydro.
Building nuclear would require a massive cultural headshift on the part of NZers, but with Australia buying nuclear powered submarines as part of the rising tensions in the Asia Pacific region maybe building a nuclear power plant would give us the excuse to move away from a complete ban on nuclear reactors anyway.
Anyone got any better facts to contribute to this?
Your pro-nuke arguments could apply in britain/europe..
But we are blessed with multiple other options..
I don't know enough about the proposed water retention plan to credibly comment on it..
But it is clear that the amount of dosh being spent on it would buy a shedload of solar/wind/tidal power..which would neatly supplement our existing hydro assets..
I mean, we could have 600 giant wind turbines in the Kaipara/Taranaki bight… But thier is a question around environmental footprint. Surely a nuclear power station that takes up a fraction of the space and needs a lot less maintenance might be better?
Wind turbines last little more than 25 years.
Each turbine has highly unstable generation. Each collector group has unstable generation. Each wind farm has unstable generation. Wind farms simply can't be base load.
I have several posts I want to do. It's not unreasonable to ask the nuclear question given our isolation, generator concentration, and market that is screwing us all.
Even after 4 country-altering crises since 2011, National just can't figure out what the state is for.
"…Even after 4 country-altering crises since 2011, National just can't figure out what the state is for…"
Yes it does! "…National Party energy spokesperson Stuart Smith… …confirmed his view was that the current structure of the electricity market was right; generators had sufficient incentives to build enough new generation, and if a new solution was needed to address the “dry year” issue, then that could be left to the market to deliver…"
National is happy for the state to do nothing while average kiwis get utterly shafted by the electricity industry.
Nuclear might take up a fraction of the space of wind farms but the toxic waste it produces continues to be the major headache that nobody has a cure for.
Another problem with nuke-power is that it looks like the much cleaner nuclear-fission will soon enough supercede it..
And does anyone know why tidal-power is not used here…it is not wrather-dependant..
I sit 'on the dock of the bay… watching the tide rolling away'..each and every day ..
And I wonder 'why not..?'
Assuming fusion become practical, it is still decades away from being an efficient and reliable source of power – we need to decarbonise now.
There are a fair few concerns around the effects on marine life etc. Very hard to figure out what effect the infrastructure will have on the tidal currents and the 'noise' from the turbines interfering with marine mammals. Alot to go wrong and not a whole lot of understanding at this point in time.
@ cricklewood..
Worse effects on marine life than the hordes of fish-hunters who descend on them most weekends..?.
Not to mention the commercial wing of that sorry pastime..?
Yes, potentially by an order of magnitude given the likes of the Kaipara are the nursery for massive amount of our snapper as an example. Interfering with the currents or the pressure waves that turbine blades can generate.
Imaging the noise of windmills but underwater, or how the altering flows has changed our rivers for the worst. Dont think we want to be doing that to our harbours etc…
The nuclear industry has a very strong track record of grossly underestimating the cost of builds. Building it within the proposed time frame is another of their challenges.
It's an issue with all major construction projects, but put the nuclear factor in there and it goes out by 10x. One of the reasons so few of them have been built in the recent generations.
Pumped hydro is within our skillset, nuclear is a whole new game from planning, through construction and then operation, both at a plant and grid level. Big ask for a small country.
Hi Graeme. I had linked these….a time ago. As an alternative. But what think?
It's a very interesting and mature technology building these things. I wish I was 40 years younger, I'd be in there. This is a very good overview of a similar, but smaller project in Europe, covers the technology involved and the problem solving that goes along. Onslow would be very similar in tech and geological challenges, but bigger.
You nail it with the 'within our skillset..' being the key.
There's insufficient materials for this 'transition' to wind and solar let alone the manufacturing capacity and skill to execute here.
Work with what we've got is the key to surviving what comes next IMO.
@tc .Of course stopping eating/exploiting animals is the shortcut to that transition..
But that is down to the individual…and most seem to be looking outwards/to others..for the solutions…and not seeing much on offer..
In the history of man has a large project ever not blown out
Na, and you can probably go back to, or before the cave on that on one.
But nuclear power plant blow outs are another thing altogether.
Actually Sanct there is a serious fault in your proposed site. namely the Kerepehi Fault
Why is no one in NZ talking about gravity batteries, where excess power is stored by lifting weights? You can transfer power to other spots and store it there on-site, as the setups are scaleable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery
"Gravity batteries". Pumped hydro, you mean?
Tidal turbines are a too much overlooked source of reliable power.
We have sufficient tidal flow in Cook Strait, for one.
And the technology is well developed. Tidal power turbines date back to the 60's.
When I was first apprenticed to the NZED >50 years ago there was a possibility that one day I would get to work at a nuclear power station.
Interest in nuclear power in New Zealand in the late 1950s and 60s was driven by rising demand for electricity. The New Zealand Electricity Department (NZED) included nuclear power in its range of possible generating sources, and in 1964 an interdepartmental Nuclear Power Siting Committee was established to begin the preliminary selection of possible reactor sites. By 1965 planning was under way for a 1000-megawatt (MW) station in Northland, with a site on the Kaipara Harbour being favoured. Engineering staff of the NZED were enrolled on overseas training courses, and an undergraduate course in reactor engineering was established at the University of Canterbury. During the 1960s and early 70s, several staff of the National Radiation Laboratory undertook training in reactor safety and licensing.
https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/nuclear-new-zealand/
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Plan_for_a_nuclear_power_plant_on_Kaipara_Harbour_%2832399602397%29.jpg
These small nuclear power plants cost about 4 Billion NZD each.
A single plant powers 1million homes.
Rolls Royce claims they are relatively quick to build and have all the latest safety features.
A couple of these and we would have emission free electricity and be set for generations.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-62038190
Love it, lets put directly over a fault line to prove how smart we are.
Oh wait better yet, lets put somewhere we know theirs no fault lines.
Using Nuclear power in NZ is like expecting a bowling ball to float across water when thrown.
Just put the reactors in Submarines so that they float and can be moved closest to where needed most to reduce line loss. Already proven technology.
Not to mention that it would make us a 'nuclear state', hence a legitimate target. And what is the carbon cost of mining, transporting, storing, removing and disposing of the material, even before the super-long-term waste maintenance?
Welllll… The Kermadec trench is 10km deep and we happen to own that, so… if we need a disposal site I am just putting it out there.
Yeah, I wondered about using subduction zones as waste disposal sites… The crap just goes back into the core and burns away into its elemental parts…. Turns out they work on vastly different time scales than would be useful to us ☹️
You want to store spent fuel where it can be accessed as we currently only use about 10% of the available energy. As tech improves the currently 'spent' fuel will be viable again.
And in that article not a word about how much waste uranium and contaminated coolant will be discharged and what they plan to do about it. Very 70s – trumpet about your state-of-the-art designs but don't worry about the discharges.
Exactly, it's as if 'emissions' are the only concern.
https://gordianknotbook.com/download/nuclear-waste-a-tale-of-two-particles/
And this assumes we do nothing with this material other than just store it. When in reality the solid 238U fuel rods still contain 97% of their original energy. We already know in principle how to extract this energy by reprocessing it, and with few decades of serious effort can fully commercialised these processes.
Which means in the medium term the actual volume of high level gamma emitting waste that would require safe storage would be less than 1- 2% of the already tiny volumes involved. There are any number of acceptably secure means to manage this.
Another key aspect not covered in my quote above, but delved into in depth by Delvanney here. The idea that any amount of radiation – no matter how small – causes accumulated catastrophic harm is a stupid lie. If this were the case the natural background radiation all life is exposed to would have rendered all life extinct billions of years ago. All the evidence suggests that our cellular DNA repair mechanisms can handle radiation up to dose rates of about 1-20 mSv/day. It is the rate that matters, not the cumulative dose. And for almost all sane scenarios the worst case power plant release or waste stream exposure is extremely unlikely to reach anything close to these dose rates for the general public.
As problems go nuclear waste streams have never so much as harmed a single person, yet for some reason this is why nuclear power cannot solve climate change which is claimed to be an existential crisis that could kill billions. This makes no rational sense whatsoever.
6 words: fukoshima, three mile island, chernobyl
I am not sure what your point is.
If you are saying that nuclear power plants can have failures then I totally agree with you. On current experience with all generation reactor designs we can estimate approximately one radiation release per 4000 reactor years of operation. In their operating life so far existing Gen 3+ reactors have not had a significant radiation release, and upcoming Gen 4 designs can reasonably expect to be as least as good if not better.
Nonetheless it is an engineering fallacy to claim we can build reactors of any kind that will never have any kind of failure. It is useful to make a comparison with commercial aviation. They invest heavily in making flying remarkably safe – yet they never pretend that an aircraft cannot have an accident. A fact they remind you of every time you board a plane and sit through a safety briefing.
Having agreed that it is impossible to have no radiation releases from NPP operation, the next question is – what is the harm of such radiation releases to the general public? In this respect for two of your three example cases the answer is a definitive zero.
Chernobyl is addressed in Sec 14 of this document. – a worst case accident of an uncontained design that would never have been licensed outside of the Soviet Union, and grotesquely mismanaged as only a pack of communist fuckers could – the confirmed harm was remarkably lower than most people imagine. We know for certain that the accident caused 59 deaths of which 57 were from radiation. All higher estimates are based on a faulty LNT model that pretends that living cells cannot repair DNA damage, and while I accept this point can be debated, it will still be orders of magnitude less harmful than this:
Since 1986 cumulatively fossil fuel pollution may well have already caused hundreds of millions of premature deaths – and yet we have continued to use them because the benefits outweighed the costs.
Yet despite the indisputable fact that nuclear power is definitively one of the safest forms of power generation we have – the irrational fear-mongering bugaboo of how dangerous it is continues to be recycled. We should know better by now – it is not the 1980's any more.
Sure, not so many people died immediately, but what about 200, 000 displaced, longer term radiation deaths and miscarriages, and a 4,000 km2 exclusion zone that will radiate gently for a while to come. I do admit it makes a fantastic wildlife sanctuary, but otherwise would have been productive land.
Also, Russia has threatened existing Ukraine nuclear power stations in the current conflict. Home-made dirty bombs.
I have no problem building nuclear power in nations that are not covered with volcanoes, and major faults.
But to suggest they be built in this country is the height of hubris. We have found new fault lines in the last 15 years we did not know were there. We have regular volcanic activity. We are moving, and have earthquakes every day.
https://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake
It's a ticking time boom to build in NZ. We are stuck with wind, solar and if they can get it right, tidal. But building nuclear here is just stupid beyond measure.
Three points:
I know it cannot be proven. but my brother who was vegetarian for all his adult life died in hie early 40's from stomach cancer. He was living in the UK at the time of the Chernobyl disaster and for several years afterwards. He ate a lot of cheese and other dairy products from France and Germany and travelled extensively in both those countries. He was always suspicious that his cancer may have been caused by the consumption of contaminated cheese or similar.
As he died here in New Zealand – he would not have featured in any stats about increased death rates post Chernobyl.
Yes – my recent experience with a certain medical procedure means I can well understand and sympathise with how your brother felt. Not knowing and not having any way of ever knowing is a disturbing position to be in. At best.
The good news is that we now understand that low rates of radiation exposure are very unlikely to cause harm. There are plenty of examples of people who sustained very high cumulative radiation doses, but at a low rate over long periods of time – who appeared to suffer no ill effects. Here is a good document covering this effect.
The other good news is that in the decades since 1986 there has been no detectable rise in excess deaths across Europe that can be attributed to Chernobyl. Again it was only with hindsight that we could determine this for certain.
Of course I cannot say anything absolute about the cause of your brother's cancer – but if it was connected with his consumption of milk and cheese products the isotopes involved 131I and 137Ce would not be typically involved with stomach cancer. Iodine concentrates in the thyroid and has a very short half-life of about 8 days. It is relatively easily managed. Of more concern is 137Cesium that typically substitutes for Potassium and is typically associated with skeletal and muscular cancers.
Again I am not trying to pretend anything definitive here – but with what we know in 2023 there are grounds to think it was unlikely your brother's demise was the result of the Chernobyl release. Which absolves nothing on the Soviet regime for what happened – the people most disgusted and angered by what happened are people who understand nuclear power intimately – and the immense reputational damage it caused.
Chernobyl is one of many in the former USSR. Some bloody nasty spots in Chernobyl, but kept in check by some bloody brave men and women.
Look for City 40. (some say outside the city is worse)
or Lake Karachay
Hot Spots – such a pc word – I always like Death Spots better. Spots if you go to, you will make yourself totally fubar.
The whole of NZ is a geo-technical hazard of some kind. You could argue the entire country is unfit for safe human habitation – but that would be stupid beyond measure as well.
It is is relatively easy to design plants to sustain very large earthquakes. I personally watched a large building containing a large paper machine suffer such serious ground shaking in the 1987 Edgecumbe event that it fluttered like a piece of paper in a gale – and I could not stand up – but afterward there was zero structural damage to the building or the machine itself. This was a very shallow quake that had dramatic surface energy, yet we had the entire site up and running again with two weeks.
An alternate approach is to float the plant in a sheltered harbour, where again it is quite straightforward to accommodate floods, quakes and tsunamis. This approach is being used by Thorcon and is progressing at their Indonesian pilot site.
If you want to postulate truly catastrophic events like a massive volcanic caldera super-volcanic event devastating much of the North Is – then go right ahead. But I suggest we might have bigger problems to worry about.
Personally I do not think NZ needs to rush into nuclear power; we do have a decent renewable SWB resource to develop over the next few decades and have the luxury of time before any nuclear fission adoption becomes urgent. But globally it is a quite different story.
RedLogix, absorbing the energy from a large rattle is one thing, keeping your plant/building functional if there is uplift or fissuring is a whole different story. In the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake
"About 5,000 square kilometres of land west of the fault was lifted up and tilted. The southern end of the Remutaka Range rose by over 6 metres, but the uplift decreased westward to near zero along the west coast of the Wellington peninsula." https://teara.govt.nz/en/historic-earthquakes/page-3
Now imagine your lovely powerplant with shock absorbers tilted 10 degrees from horizontal, or uplifted 6 m, or with a big crack underneath it.
I can understand your objections – after all images of the devastation from ChCh or more recently Turkey are not pretty.
Yet much of what you are seeing collapsing horribly in these quakes are buildings with a much, much lower specification than what is commonplace in heavy industry. A concrete steel reinforced column that is say 2m square on each side, and filled with so much 30mm steel RIO that the fabricators can barely get their hands in to assemble it – and then filled with very high MPA grade concrete – is astonishingly robust.
When I expressed my amazement at how well that paper machine building had survived with not so much as visible cracks, the engineers pointed out to me that the building, 200m long, 40m wide and 15m high, had been designed to sustain being tilted 30 deg from horizontal in any direction, with 3,000 tonnes of paper making machinery on a mezzanine floor 7m up, with no damage.
(And have to point out again that the Edgecumbe quake was no mere rattle; it may have been only 6.3 Richter, but because of the nature of the event, the surface shaking was extreme in the immediate vicinity. Literally I was thrown many metres off my feet several times with no hope of controlling what was happening. Many people had similar stories.)
And yes the Wairarapa uplifts are bloody impressive – I have walked along that coast many times. Hell when I was working in Dusky Sound we found a relatively recent quake slip that had about 24m of horizontal displacement. So these things are possible.
Yet they are not impossible to design for. Wellington's Te Marua Water Treatment Plant has the main Alpine Fault literally running right through the carpark just metres away from the front door – yet the engineers are confident the facility can sustain any the predicted event. Again it is astonishing what a lot of concrete and steel can do.
But that is the old fashioned way to build nuclear power plants. Most Gen 4 designs are going to be built in a factory, and typically shipped to a coastal site as a single steel fabrication, using the same kind of highly automated and efficient methods we already use in modern ship building. This kind of highly robust facility can be designed to sustain unthinkably catastrophic events – again I'll point to Thorcon's approach as an example.
Engineers are typically highly motivated to learn from their mistakes – and events like TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima are closely studied afterward. (One of the root causes of the TMI incident was that operators thought they had commanded an important pressure relief valve closed, when in fact it was physically stuck open. Because there was no position feedback from the valve, no-one in the control room knew this for far too long. Directly because of the reports that came out of this event, valve position feedbacks that were rare beforehand, have become virtually universal throughout all heavy industry.)
Looping back to the analogy with commercial aviation – imagine if the world had said we were not going to fly anymore because of the Hindenburg. That because of that mistake we were incapable of learning from it and making aviation acceptably safe.
RedLogix, I'm 'warming' to your argument, thanks for the expansion and the impressive description of over-engineering for earthquakes.
There must be upsides to decommissioning such latest-generation portable nuclear plants – maybe popping them down an active subduction zone whole?
@ tWiggle
For a very long time I was firmly on the anti-nuke side of this argument. But despite a decent technical education for many decades I believed a lot of half-truths and distortions – and looking back on a lot of what I was saying a decade ago is an exercise in humility.
Oddly enough the turning point for me was Fukushima itself. At first I was alarmed as was almost everyone else – but then slowly it dawned on me that it was not a radiation catastrophe turning the entire Pacific Ocean into a dead wasteland as some where predicting.
After this I invested quite a few thousand hours learning as much as I could on what this industry was really about. And in this respect I do not demand anyone else simply accept anything I say about nuclear just because I say it. If there is a lesson I learned here it is about respecting other people's right to an independent search for truth.
Nuclear fission engineering is a serious business and I do not want to gloss over any of the very real challenges that remain, even with the Gen 4 designs I have frequently pointed to. But there are no magical energy sources that come with no downsides – there are no free lunches and I accept nuclear fission comes with it's own price. Yet I would contend the very real costs of unconstrained climate change will be in the long run far, far worse.
PS – no I have not seen anyone suggesting subduction zones as a disposal method. I suspect the objection would be the slow and uncontrolled burial in ocean depths with limited options to react to the unexpected. But next time I am chatting with some of my online contacts I will ask about it if I remember.
I do. If humans allow climate to get so bad that it collapses civilisation (this is not a fringe theory), who will look after the power stations and nuclear waste?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country
NZ nuclear power plants? Nimby if it's all the same to nuclear enthusiasts.
Australia first! Heck, they've got unmatched uranium reserves.
Spaceship Earth currently absorbs more solar energy than it radiates – the Anthropocene is an era of planetary hyper-energisation.
In 2022, CO2 was 417 ppm. Is this iteration of civilisation incapable of learning to live within its means? If so, then it's not for want of lessons.
As someone fortunate enough to be born into a 'good' NZ family, the interval from the 1950s onward has been an exceptional time to be alive.
Many of us still don't know how lucky we were – yet.
A not unreasonable question, but again you have to ask if civilisation has collapsed so suddenly and dramatically that managing the legacy tail of retired nuclear power plants cannot be done – then I would suggest we have bigger problems to worry about.
Personally I find myself increasingly squeezed between climate deniers who still want to pretend that we can do unconstrained CO2, and climate catastrophisers who insist on immediate and radical industrial dismantling and systems transformation.
On the one had the deniers pretend we can fuck with intricate climate systems we do not properly understand, and on the other the alarmist pretend we can radically fuck with economic and energy systems upon which depend the lives of billions, with only happy consequences. In my view both are insanely risky pathways.
Nothing about our future is certain or guaranteed, but I have consistently argued our best bet is to treat this as the engineering problem it is and rationally plan to transition toward nuclear fission over the next few decades. Just as we have already moved from photosynthesis, to coal, to oil, then gas and now renewables. Eventually we will likely move from fission to fusion – or maybe something entirely unsuspected.
If we have just got on with nuclear energy as we already were in the 70's, we would not even be having this climate conversation now half a century later.
The blameless France …
But there other options to supplement the variables, wind and solar … battery storage of them and
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/geothermal-energy-germanys-largely-untapped-renewable-heat-source
No, we wouldn't be having that conversation, we'd possibly be having one like they have about the Sellafield nuclear power plant. Opened in the 1950's, and expanded and run for 60 years or so, it will take a hundred years to decommission. A nuclear power plant is a gift 'for generations' indeed.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/15/dismantling-sellafield-epic-task-shutting-down-decomissioned-nuclear-site
Again I would point to the analogy with the Hindenburg – an engineering failure from very early in the aviation era – that we learned from and did not repeat. We found better and much safer ways to fly.
Same with nuclear power – we never built another 1950's Windscale style pile again. If the world was full of reactors just like it you might have a point. But we don't.
I read that entire article carefully and was not surprised to find it the usual carefully contrived scaremongering. While it heavily emphasises how long spent fuel and waste is radioactive for – it completely fails to distinguish between highly penetrating gamma radiation that needs to be kept isolated for a few centuries at most, and low level alpha radiation that is only dangerous if you ingest the material.
Nor does it mention that this spent fuel is really a highly valuable source of fresh fuel for the next generations of reactors – and that disposing of it in deep underground facilities is incredibly wasteful and unnecessary.
Nor does it mention that medium and low level waste are for the most part harmless. That current exposure levels are set far too low because of the entirely flawed LNT (Linear No Threshold) model that assumes any exposure to radiation – no matter how low, even below the natural background level- is somehow cumulative. This model results in stupidly expensive regulations to reduce radiation levels well beyond any sane requirement.
(Just a few hours ago I read an article written locally here in Perth by a journo privileged to spend a day on a visiting Virginia class sub. One of the nuke officers pointed out that working 24hrs next to the reactor has less total exposure than a day on the beach.)
What matters is the rate at which you are exposed – not the cumulative dose. If you read this article on the Windscale fire you will note the remarkably brave actions of the Reactor Manager Tom Tuohy who must have been highly irradiated many times during the course of the accident – but because he managed to limit the rate of his exposure through instinctive good sense – he suffered no radiation sickness and lived into his 90's.
Once we resume taking a science based approach to properly managing radiation risk we will find most of these absurdly inflated fears and costs around managing spent fuel and waste will become a great deal more manageable.
Please have a read of the effects on a population of low-grade exposure to uranium ore mining pollution in India. It's not contained nuclear waste, but gives a perspective on living in an environment contaminated with uranium waste, ie improperly managed, representing chronic exposure.
https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/indias-nuclear-industry-pours-its-wastes-into-a-river-of-death-and-disease/
"I have consistently argued our best bet is to treat this as the engineering problem"
You have, indeed.
Could it be that "engineering"; that is, acting unilaterally upon the world, is where we have gone wrong?
Perhaps we should be co-managing/taking advice before acting?
New Zealand has been beset by at least four country-altering events since 2009's GFC. Not a "window" so much as the wall fall down. Front fell off.
The stupidity of the Key part-privatisations of energy generators particularly Contact, is that they are now free to lobby hard. So they are. They oppose anything except their own projects. Hence the politics is far harder than it needed to be.
The scale of disability New Zealand is facing if we don't replace our Indonesian brown coal fired thermal baseload energy security should make every major user get noisy. So far it's mostly complaints.
Which project has a shot at completion in time to achieve both national energy security and carbon goals by our stated 2050 goal?
https://environment.govt.nz/publications/aotearoa-new-zealands-first-emissions-reduction-plan/energy-and-industry/
Woods has done really well to protect this concept from the Policy Bonfire Hipkins is undertaking. In fact I'm surprised it hasn't died.
There is a high risk that NZSuper's Taranaki offshore wind deal will fuck up Woods like they did Twyford on light rail, using NZBattery to bury her. They are aggressive lobbyists who undercut policy.
Woods needs to outplay NZSuper and Infratil and ACC and Contact all at once. Very hard. Dr Turner is deep beltway but he's not in the world of energy finance politics, which tends to chew you up fairly fast.
The existing NZBattery proposal will be hard already. Nuclear would require a version of a Strategic Spatial Plan in which multiple regions agree, on untested legislation.
That would not be as hard as it sounds if for example one proposed nuclear the the Kaipara as per the 1970s proposal, and NZBattery in the south.
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2022/0187/27.0/d672709e2.html
Believe it or not I expect a future National government to inherit national energy crises far harder than the current term, and on the last 3 decades history they are better at the nation-altering projects than Labour.
A decent HVDC cable to Australia from Taranaki would enable what we really need which is an internationalised energy market, which NZ would export into. That would be a more useful gig for NZSuper, Infratil and ACC in the nation-building game.
Yes. The obvious objection is that NZ lacks the capacity to operate nuclear power at present. Yet one of the main spin-offs from the AUKUS agreement is going to be the rapid development of this capacity in Australia. Already they have hundreds of engineering and technical people in study and training, and while for the next decade it will be focussed on the submarine program, inevitably these people will be available to build out a civilian nuclear program. NZ might well eventually be able to leverage this.
And secondly it is worth noting that most Gen 4 designs intentionally minimise the need for highly skilled operators. Indeed it has been joked that walk-away safe Gen4 designs really could employ Homer Simpson – because there literally is nothing he could do to cause a plant failure.
Besides most of the skills required locally would be in regulatory and engineering agencies within government. It would be the overseas vendors who would do almost all the heavy technical lifting from a design, build and operate perspective.
You trans-Tasman HVDC cable is admirable – but a tad heroic in scope surely? Would there be a decent economic case?
Someone thinks there's an economic case for a 3800 kilometre submarine cable .
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/04/government-chaos-delays-uk-sahara-energy-link
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco-UK_Power_Project
Would we pay Australia to transit our power to SE Asia, as they're planning to do quite soon, from ginormous solar farms?
https://suncable.energy/
We may be better off buying our power from Oz.
Contact got flogged off well before Key arrived on the scene, in 1999, but aside from that Key's decision to turn the rest of our electricity industry into a vehicle to generate returns for private (and to a lesser extent state) interests has fucked our nation.
Your portrayal of NZ Super brings back the Muldoon Dancing Cossacks portrayal of 1975 Labour's super scheme, with a government fund that powerful it takes over / crushes everything. I shudder at the monster we may have created.
As an aside, is there a breakdown of how Onslow went from 4 Billion to 15.7? Does this include the purchase / nationalisation of Contact. Beause that's the only way I can see the thing functioning.
Now a HVDC link across the Tasman and an integrated energy market across the same with energy flows both ways, now that’s an idea to explore and develop.
lol.
Tbf if you were to compare nuclear to a fossil fuels over even a relatively short period of time the death and destruction wrought by coal etc etc would be far worse than nuclear.
There's no way outside of complete castrophe the energy demands of humanity as a whole are going to decrease. Thinking they can or will is essentially sticking your head in the sand. As it stands nuclear is the safest and fastest way forward
Compared to nuclear, hydro doesn't look too flash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Casualties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam
this is the thinking that sees the crisis as about carbon isolated from everything else. There's a reason the XR paired the climate and ecological crises. Peak everything tells me that nuclear won't solve the problem because the problem is we act as if there are no limits. But there are and we're about to learn some very hard lessons on that.
But the price of building a nuclear power station must include the cost of decommissioning it, plus l-o-n-g-term waste storage, which exceeds the build price. It’s no cheapie solution.
The shut UK Sellafield plant, which admittedly also reprocessed used uranium rods from round the world, costs £2 billion a year just to maintain. That does not include the cost of dissassembling structures and transferring waste uranium to a planned £56 billion deep mine storage facility. Spent nuclear fuel is no picnic, and is essentially ignored by most nuclear-powered countries.
Todd’s gone.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300832449/former-national-leader-todd-muller-to-step-down-at-election
”Former National Party leader Todd Muller will step down at the next election.
Muller is MP for the Bay of Plenty. In a statement on Friday morning, he said he would not re-contest the seat or seek a list position with the National Party.”
Jumped, pushed, non selected, or can see the electoral writing on the wall?
But Willis keeps the Fonterra flame alive at the front of a government-in-waiting.
For a moment we could have had Fonterra senior players as Number 1 and Number 2 in the country…
… which would have been a most natural power-concentration for New Zealand.
Re fonterra:..is it ironic or deeply disturbing that stuff recently gave fonterra the number one gong in nz top ten polluting companies..?
And that seven of the other top ten polluters are meat processing entities…?
Fonterra has not yet made a donation for the re-fencing $20 a metre fund raiser.
http://Former National leader Todd Muller to step down at election https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/486140/former-national-leader-todd-muller-to-step-down-at-election
"In June 2021, he announced he planned to retire from politics – but after Christopher Luxon took over the party leadership, he said he had decided to stay."
Maybe Christopher Luxon wasn't the White Knight he was hoping for after all.
Again, this is late in the piece for an MP to announce his retirement.
The BoP electorate committee will have already confirmed him as the National Candidate, and will now have to re-open selection.
His letter does indicate (well, at least to me) that there are pressure issues in the role, which, following his breakdown, he just can't be confident he can manage. He acknowledges that it will be a tough election campaign (who would expect otherwise), and that he just doesn't have the capacity and stamina to put in the effort needed.
While it's good to have that level of self-awareness – it would have been better for the party and his electorate, if he'd had it last October or November.
Todd retired, then unretired when his God squadder buddy boy got the top banana role and he thought they might win the election, now he's had a revelation in a conversation with a snake at his happy clappy church and re-resigned again.
to paraphrase Monty Python,
When electoral danger reared it's ugly head, Sir Todd bravely turned his tail and fled. Yes, brave Sir Todd has turned about and gallantly he has chickened out.
According to Mr Luxon, Todd has a "world-class brain" (at about 3:00 min in this NZ herald video) – which is why he appointed Todd to a shadow role in cyclone recovery. It is a shame if someone with a world-class brain sees no future for themselves in the current National Party. Other thoughts come to mind though:
Decided 3 more years in opposition was unpalatable I expect
I respect Todd Muller for the way he has handled himself since his breakdown and resignation from the leadership.
We've seen MPs suffer health problems, take leave and come back, but it's usually physical health, like cancer (Nikki Kaye, Kiri Allen). The stigma attached to mental health makes it harder.
Muller has been honest about it – this is a moving and important interview, from Stuff in 2021:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/124564075/todd-muller-on-his-leadership-coup-his-breakdown-and-the-road-back-to-health
It should not be either/or: you're always fine, or you're not up to the job. He has made a contribution to improved understanding and empathy on mental health issues, and deserves credit for that.
Point 1, Onslow is already a lake, it will just be bigger.
Point 2, Compared to nuclear, its local water with no problematic waste.
Point 3, Nuclear requires ongoing imported fuel.
Point 4, Marsden Point is within one of the largest calderas in the country, albeit extinct, or is it?.
Point 5, apparently there is not as much consistent wind in NZ as we think.
Lake Onslow is already a man made lake it would take between four and five years to build and a further two years to fill.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300066128/government-wants-100-per-cent-green-electricity-by-adding-battery-power-to-hydro-power
All for six weeks of extra hydro water supply which would then take two years to refill. What do we do in the mean time while it is replenished?
It does not increase the out put of the Clutha hydro dams just keeps them going for a short time in low rainfall years.
Citation please. Which means a quote, and explanation and a link. The onus is on you to provide evidence and argument not expect people to read an article and parse your meaning.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/300831569/government-to-take-lake-onslow-power-project-forward-despite-16b-price-tag
The first sentence above "Lake Onslow is already a man made lake it would take between four and five years to build and a further two years to fill." was a quote from the previously linked article.
Both are public knowledge.
Thanks. Citation still needed for the idea that the intention is to use up the whole storage and then wait 2 years for it to refill.
I'm not an engineer nor a hydro bod, but my understanding is that they will use the battery to produce power on an as needed basis when the hydro lakes are low. I cannot imaging they will run the battery dry. The hydro lakes don't run out of power completely, which is what would need to happen in your scenario of powering the whole country for six weeks just from Onslow.
But feel free to correct me with some evidence.
If the full capacity is not planned to be used why is it so big?
Without doubt it is a slow fill/quick empty device. So that even if a smaller proportion is used the refill will be slow and intersected with another draw-down further emptying the lake. Eventually emptying it or only using a small part of the capacity.A LOT of land will be flooded just to use the top bit of water.
I do remember "Damn the Dam said the Fantail" ……… or is this 'different'?
Shall we assume you made your statement up then.
We shall
Still does not explain why a $20 Billion asset will just sit there just in case it is dry from time to time justifies the destruction of an Iconic landscape and destroying the locals farms.
I get it – Farmers can be sacrificed for urban ease?
Next the McKenzie Basin?
Your numbers make no sense…but that aside…it is not just farmers that stand to benefit from (i agree) an expensive project…ultimately the country must secure its energy production and as has been noted, this appears to be the most possible method.
Many may not like it, but our ag production is what enables our current existence…and until such time as we develop an alternative (offers please?) thats what we have.
You don't understand what it's for obviously.
It's to cover peak load times and will recharge constantly, hopefully it'll enable all coal fired milk drying facilities and coal backup generation to be mothballed.
Once again, gravity batteries seem a plausible option to a storge lake to manage flucuating load.
Are you going to support NZ powering down then?
.https://thestandard.org.nz/powerdown/
" the destruction of an Iconic landscape and destroying the locals farms."
Have you been there, Maurice, to see what it is you are describing?
@ twiggle
How many gravity batteries to secure 5 TWh? (remembering that pumped hydro is a gravity battery)
Gravity batteries, alas, are currently more a short term solution to green energy fluctuations, it seems.
From https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220511-can-gravity-batteries-solve-our-energy-storage-problems
"In a valley in southern Switzerland, the striking steel and concrete prototype from Energy Vault, another leader in the gravity battery space, stands more than 20 stories tall. When green power supply exceeds demand, one of several AI-controlled cranes lifts a pair of 30-tonne blocks upwards. When demand outstrips supply, back down they go, generating enough energy for thousands of homes..
….Think of it as a warehouse of [1000s of] energy elevators…When clean electricity is coming in, the blocks – made of recycled material – go up, and when the grid needs supply, they go back down. An EVx with a storage capacity of 100MWh can power around 25,000 homes for a day.'
Each installation's size and layout will determine its overall storage capacity, but even at the lower end, the buildings will cover dozens of acres. Could this be problematic? No, Piconi says, as the systems are likely to be situated near wind and solar farms far from urban centres…'Basically anywhere you can construct a 20-storey building will work,' he says."
To my thinking, it doesn't have to be one giant facility at the generation site. Smaller-scale storage could be built around NZ to reduce the need for peak-load coal-fired stations.
At the start of the article, gravity batteries are suggested as an alternative to pumping water back up to the storage lake of a hydropower station when demand is low. That's what sparked my interest initially. I didn't realise Lake Onslow will be for medium-term storage, but thought it was part of a repumping system. Gravity batteries clearly won’t work at that scale; my claims of scaleability were fantasy, sorry.
.. gravity batteries clearly won't work at that scale, apart from pumped hydro…
A history lesson
Public Works and Maori land
South Island hydro
ECAN and nitrates in the Canterbury aquifer supplying urban areas with drinking water.
Some one has already allowed dairy farming … McKenzie Basin
" I didn't realise Lake Onslow will be for medium-term storage., but thought it was part of a repumping system."
As I understand the proposal Onslow is to be used as a variable sink to enable the intermittent renewable production WHILE providing a back up store of energy in the event of a dry year….most of the alternatives dont provide that flexibility (though theoretically elevated weights could but as noted that is essentially what Onslow is)…even nuclear dosnt provide that flexibility even if we overlook the other issues.
So ypu think all other power production might stop??
I don't think the caldera is pertinent. Given Fukashima, the whole Tsunami palaver would need addressing. But it doesn't have to be there, that was just an idea.
Supprizez me that noone talks about tidal generators tide comes in tide goes out round and round every day of the year regardless and we cant harness that force ??Why ?
/
Someone tried that at the mouth of the Kaipara. Got knocked back. Something to do with snapper spawning grounds.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaipara_Tidal_Power_Station
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/131520734/minister-says-15b-lake-onslow-investment-decision-should-be-above-politics
Whatever your opinion about the ppsd lake Onslow 'chance would be a fine thing' is my response to the good sense idea from Hon Megan Wood of parties working together.
National does not do whole of Govt approaches, well rarely, as we found with the response to the pandemic. As I have said before it was one of the most shocking times for me, as I waited for Simon Bridges to cross the floor to stand with the PM as she announced that NZ was facing a pandemic and we faced unprecedented times. I still feel the sinking feeling when I realised the pandemic was going to be a party political issue.
I guess it would be too much to have expected working together with such right wing drollery such as Stuart Smith's
In contrast to those who know
Be a bit careful there about interpreting Bridges's non-support over the pandemic in Parliament. I read somewhere at the time that National had approached Labour to offer bipartisan support. (Sorry, went hunting, but couldn't find the news article). My memory suggests a hint of let's plan this together, ie we want to share in political visibility over pandemic management.
I wondered at the time why Ardern turned National down (a sense of flatly?). Perhaps managing compromise with Peters was enough work already; or perhaps Peters himself turned it down. So I interpret the no vote of support from Bridges as payback for be8ng shut out.
Here's a news article which says Bridges was 'not opposed to the idea'.
Which looks to me as though he was floating the concept – and waiting for a Government reaction.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/03/coronavirus-simon-bridges-won-t-rule-out-joining-wartime-style-grand-coalition-for-covid-19-fight.html
I have heard after the event that this is what happened, ie that an offer was made, but I was thinking of something far more spontaneous and that was to get up and cross the floor during or after the announcement. Very much like on a marae people will get up and cluster to support a speaker. Often not so much for exactly what they have said but for the fact that they have got up and said something.
Even if nothing had happened then and there and it was left to politics the offer was there and the people of NZ could have seen that this unprecedented happening was a problem for united NZ not party political NZ.
I believe that would have made a difference
Shanreagh, I only mentioned National's bipartisan offer being turned down by the Coalition because you followed National's lack of pandemic support in Parliament with a claim they have a general resistance to bipartisan planning.
Sorry I don't understand……National tends to have the approach of being anti most things unless they have thought of it themselves. They are generally not reflective about what might happen in the future and generally act as if everything issue in life involves a political approach ie left or right.
I have discussed issues with enough Nats and Nat type supporters over many years to know that they believe just about everything in life has a political spin or approach to it.
I gave an example of this by the quote 'and National would immediately cancel the business case if it won the election.' So nothing that says would review, reconsider……just cancel fullstop.
I instanced the pandemic announcement as being a case in point, afterwards and with reflection they may have said they were going to work with the govt. PM gave them a task of formally peer reviewing/adopting a steering committee approach.
They could not do this, Bridges made it all about how he needed to breach lockdown by travelling to Wellington so he could address the media. Did he even adopt a careful and helpful approach to this task. No.
So the recent-ish moment when they could have taken a whole of govt approach brought out their tendency to do a left/right oppositional stance.
There is more to policy making than just being opposed to what the last person suggested. National's policy approach shows that just being contrary is a major way they 'do' policy.
I mentioned the pandemic announcement as that was top of my mind when looking at their cancel, cancel, cancel approach to Lake Onslow. It was the very reason Hon Megan Woods did this shot over the bows and that was to bring forward the expected sterile response of cancel and the market does everything wonderfully well and if it needed doing the market would have done it.
Hopefully Megan Woods will keep saying these things about working together so that it will get through Nats noggins that some issues would be better with everyone talking rather than trying to put a left right spin on everything that walks.
Thanks for your thoughtful and informative expansion, Shanreagh. I think there is likely to be an even bigger divide now, after National were happy enough to glide in the wake of the anti-Ardern movement.
Cheaper power, can't have that old chap think of the poor share holders!!!
First he was coming for Citizens Advice. Now ..Librarians?
Could we have a volunteer to replace Mayor "buckets Brown” ?
It is worse than that. The guy is a complete moron.
Why limit it to librarians?
Surely the Mayor can be responsible for cleaning his own office. As can the senior executive team. They can form a roster for cleaning the staff room and toilets. All outside work hours of course, this can be entirely 'voluntary'!
How about all of the people who holding stop/go signs on the roadworks. Surely this is an 'unqualified' job that could easily be done by volunteers.
[All sarcasm, intentional]
And, just in case he's missed the fact that we have a cost-of-living crisis. There are not limitless wells of volunteer time out there – just waiting to be tapped. People need an actual paying job to survive in Auckland (and often need more than one)
All of the charities which depend on volunteers, have been saying for at least the last decade that their volunteer support is drying up – as people simply don't have the free time any longer. And that's for organizations where you donate time to accomplish a charity goal – not for something that you already pay for in your rates.
If Mayor Brown wants to argue to close libraries, or reduce opening hours – then that's one conversation. But claiming that you can continue to run a library service with volunteer staff is quite another.
Actually, the libraries which 'could' be argued to be unnecessary (heavy overlap in a small geographical area) – are the ones in the heritage boroughs of Auckland (Remuera, Parnell and Epsom Libraries, for example). Which all have highly motivated and wealthy usergroups who will fight to the death for their local library (and have done so, in the past)
Just thinking more about the East Cape slash problem.
As I understand it, the law of nuisance says you cannot use your land in a way that causes damage to the property of others by letting something dangerous escape.
So far, landowners have relied on the council to prosecute forestry companies, but farmers whose land is covered in logs would seem to have a cause of action in the courts, ie a private lawsuit, for the damage they have suffered.
A NZ case is Double J Smallwoods Ltd v Gisborne District Council, 13 June 2017 (fire spread because of pampas and scrub on the council's land).
Probably too hard for farmers to contemplate that sort of thing right now though.
If silt/farm soil chokes downstream communities, should farmers be held to account (for not retaining their soil)?
+100
Never forget that if Ardern had not become PM, this man would have been a senior Cabinet Minister in a Bridges/English government …
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/from-politician-to-pimp-the-transformation-of-jami-lee-ross
For us horoscope watchers, welcome to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius:
"The rise of [Social Media Misinformation] has corresponded to a modern transition to the information age, where information itself has become a productive force."
More seriously, the source article for this quote nails the societal effects of misinformation spread through social media.
https://www.stimson.org/2022/social-media-misinformation-and-the-prevention-of-political-instability-and-mass-atrocities/
Having close friends who, variously, have swallowed The Great Replacement racism, Jordan Petersen's anti-woman dross, and RT News lies about Russia's actions in Ukraine, I can only shake my head, button my lip around them, and wonder what poisoned bait I personally have succumbed to.
I've spent very little time on Peterson, but is it anti woman to point out that men are the ones out there doing the big hours in the shitty conditions getting squashed burnt and broken building and repairing, and delivering and getting very little recognition for it.
Go to a gas station a 5 am, it's all men in high vis with calloused hands or driving trucks, (occasionally a woman but predominantly men)
It probably is, however, anti-woman to refrain from pointing out that women are the ones doing the big hours in low-wage jobs, with little hope of promotion.
And the ones, overwhelmingly, doing the unpaid 'work' that keeps the family running.
As a society, we undervalue 'women's work' – to an even greater extent than we undervalue blue collar work.
Check out the night-cleaning staff – overwhelmingly women (with the occasional man invariably a recent immigrant).
The easy answer to earthquake risk for reactors is to build them on vessels. These can be largely stationary, but are portable for refit or scrapping, and circumvent some of the permitting issues land-based reactors might have.
Of course it would have been better had certain epic morons not boosted our population beyond the capacity of significant infrastructure, but we must play the hand those blithering idiots have dealt us.
Auckland cannot build so much as a cycleway without pissing away tens of millions, but a reactor generator vessel can be built by a country that has not traded in their engineers for dysfunctional bureaucrats, and has a sporting chance of actually working.
Begins with T ends with Nami
It's not a perfect defense – but large ships are rarely damaged by the great waves, Their destructive effect is a consequence of rapidly shallowing water – get a bit of water under your keel and you experience them as a simple swell.