A socialist, as opposed to a Green, solution to global warming has to consider floating mini-nuclear power stations. They could be the key to rapid de-carbonisation of power production in developing countries – and even here in NZ if you think about it. The design from this Danish company are apparently a modern Compact Molten Salt Reactor design that removes the threat of a meltdown in the event of an accident – it will simply shut down.
We could easily park one of these up in the Weiti river near Stillwater on the north shore (or where ever) and power 200,000+ homes with just one of these. This plant is 1TW so it would completely free us of any further need for wind or solar development and dramatically cut the cost of electricity for consumers, make NZ a 100% zero-emission energy producer are free up tons of existing capacity to produce Green hydrogen and power a rapid conversion to a completely ICB free vehicle fleet by 2045-50. Crucially, it would ensure the economy remained competitive and thus maintain our standard of living.
Imagine – completely emission free with a mix of nuclear/hydro/wind/solar! Surely it is the best stop gap measure until fusion comes along?
The main reason nukes like this aren't going to come to New Zealand anytime soon is simply cost.
We 're in the very fortunate position of having plenty of hydro available on demand, so we can add as much very cheap wind and solar as we want and we can use the hydro to fill the gaps from the wind and solar. We've also got a decent amount of cheap geothermal providing very steady baseload power.
However, we may need to get used to the idea of nukes kinda like that powering visiting and local ships.
Interestingly, one of my reasons to move to NZ was the close distance to several nuclear power plants in Europe (Germany and France). My neighbour worked in one of them and after hearing his "inside" stories you know that most promises / claims by the nuclear industry are worthless bullshit.
If they really believe they are 100% safe, they wouldn't have the nuclear power plants in limited liability sub-companies and they would be able to properly ensure them.
And there's still the nuclear waste from running and decommissioning the power plants. The German power companies immediately agreed to pay 5 billion Euros to the German government to rid themselves from such problems… similar to other polluting options it's all economical while the pollution is for free.
The CMSR technology that Seaborg (and about a dozen other similar companies) are going to use is completely different to the one your neighbour worked with.
All currently operating reactors are derivatives of the 1940's design that was used on the original Nautilus submarine; and yet despite this design dating from literally the dawn of the nuclear age, it remains by far the safest form of power generation. All the data points to this.
I've been following developments in this space very closely for quite a few years, all the innovation in 4th gen nuclear power leverages decades of science, materials and engineering innovation to deliver clean, abundant and reliable energy using wholly different technologies to existing plants.
The big limitation at present is not improving safety, reducing proliferation risk, nor even waste disposal … these are all solved problems. The critical challenge for nuclear at present is to get it's costs below that of coal and gas while meeting all regulatory expectations; and everyone working in this space is aware of this.
Thanks, RedLogix. At least you don't insult people's intelligence like Sanctuary did below (which obviously doesn't help to argue for nuclear power).
I am fully aware that the new generation reactors are not comparable (I am an engineer and worked mostly for power companies) and clearly understand the energy requirements of our comfortable daily lifestyle. I am not 100% against nuclear power.
I am just a lot more cautious around statements like:
it remains by far the safest form of power generation
Or
all the innovation in 4th gen nuclear power leverages decades of science, materials and engineering innovation to deliver clean, abundant and reliable energy using wholly different technologies to existing plants.
Or
The big limitation at present is not improving safety, reducing proliferation risk, nor even waste disposal … these are all solved problems
As they sound exactly like the ones in the brochures of the original nuclear power plants… And it turned out they didn't meet reality. So excuse my scepticism.
The German power companies immediately agreed to pay 5 billion Euros to the German government to rid themselves from such problems… similar to other polluting options it's all economical while the pollution is for free. [my italics]
If nothing else millsy you never leave anyone in doubt as to where you stand … 🙂
Australia and NZ are rather uniquely positioned in that we can probably delay migrating to nuclear power for quite a few decades yet … we have sufficient renewable resource to lean on so that we don't have to be on the leading edge of any new nuclear tech.
Agreed. NZ has the luxury to see how the new nuclear power plants you mentioned above work out. It will also be interesting to see if there are more efficient or completely new renewable energy sources available in a couple of decades time (we might not require nuclear power by then).
A big design criterion of the latest generations of reactor designs is to make them "walk away safe". This means that the result of loss of control function leads to the reactions stopping and the core cooling purely from the laws of physics. So they can't go boom.
This is a huge contrast to the early reactor designs from the 50s and 60s like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, that all required continuous active control to prevent the heat generation running away. When cooling and control was lost through an operator making the wrong response because of a crap control interface (Three Mile Island), or because of running a badly designed test with the wrong unprepared staff in the control room (Chernobyl) or wiping out the electrical controls and backup with a tsunami (Fukushima), then the old designs allowed the core to heat up from residual decay, eventually leading to superheated water reacting with zirconium to separate into hydrogen and oxygen and then going boom, and/or meltdown.
Newer designs have fixed that conceptual fault of requiring continuous active control for safety. Part of the reason for the dangerous designs in the 50s and 60s is back then there was much less knowledge and concern about what could go wrong. In my opinion, that pendulum has swung too far the other way, where we're now way over-concerned about very very small risks from nuclear, while ignoring much greater continuous harms from other forms of power generation. Especially the harms from coal and gas.
"However, weak driving forces that power many passive safety features can pose significant challenges to effectiveness of a passive system, particularly in the short term following an accident."
… passivity is not synonymous with reliability or availability, even less with assured adequacy of the safety feature, though several factors potentially adverse to performance can be more easily counteracted through passive design (public perception). On the other hand active designs employing variable controls permit much more precise accomplishment of safety functions; this may be particularly desirable under accident management conditions."
That IAEA quote seems absurdly obtuse in the light of modern methods and I note is derived from a document dated 1991.
It entirely focusses on the PWR technology of the day, completely predates any 4th generation designs, and looks irrelevant to any discussion about them.
In practical realistic terms, the choice between nuclear and what we're accepting right now comes down to bedwetting about some hypothetical risks that engineers put massive amounts of effort into eliminating because they know if those risks turns into a disaster, their industry is gone, or there's the tons of mercury and other toxins dumped into the atmosphere and rivers from the likes of Huntly, Wairakei etc.
Personally, if I were offered the choice of having a nuke just around the corner from my place in exchange for eliminating Huntly and eliminating coal use at Glenbrook, I'd jump at it. There's no way I'd live within 200km in the northeast quadrant from either Huntly or Glenbrook, because of their emissions and prevailing winds. Since I'm northwest of them, and winds from the southeast are rare in Auckland, I can somewhat unhappily accept that occasionally I'm downwind of their emissions.
Putting faith in engineers and operators for the next 50-70 years is another thing entirely.
Fukushima wasn't just the result of an engineering boo-boo. It was the result of things like waste fuel mismanagement that would have been dismissed at the time of construction as "hypothetical risks that engineers put massive amounts of effort into eliminating".
Maybe the advertised safety accurately reflects the actual safety under standard human operating conditions this time. But the nuclear industry has been notoriously unreliable in this regard, for decades.
Put simply, this is why all 4th gen designs remove plant operator from any direct control of the core. That's the meaning of the term 'walk away safe'.
And yet, even with the extreme carelessness and obvious flaws of past designs, and the sloppiness of some operators, the actual harms from nuclear generation are tiny. The harms from future designs where safety is taken much more seriously can be expected to be much much less.
Or if you want to just look at individual big disasters, hydro has had the biggest, but there have been plenty of other really big non-nuke energy disasters
Thing about radiation is that it's got a much less demonstrable mechanism of harm than a hydro dam bursting.
But please, keep talking about how the obvious flaws (that were claimed to be completely safe at the time of construction) barely did any harm, in order to make folk feel better about tomorrow's obvious flaws unexpectedly causing another problem that you assure us can't happen.
I fully understand the reaction most people do have around ionising radiation; it's the invisible nature of it that I think spooks most people. Hell I've personally walked around an industrial plant carrying in my bare hands a relatively powerful Kr-85 beta source. I was totally safe, but looking back I couldn't help but feel a strong prickly sense of danger. In no sense can I be dismissive of this natural reaction.
At the same time I sincerely believe that this 'unseeable, unknowable, and insensible' quality has been exploited by various players to push agendas that have little to do with actual safety.
At the same time I sincerely believe that this 'unseeable, unknowable, and insensible' quality has been exploited by various players to push agendas that have little to do with actual safety.
RL, could you list (in your sincere opinion; no need for explanation) the "various players" and their respective "agendas" that have little to do with (actual) safety?
Suppose we’re all players, each with our own sincere beliefs and agendas.
I should have expressed myself more clearly: when a dam bursts, if you find a drowned person in the debris, that's pretty clear.
Estimates for Chernobyl go from only a few dozen directly involved in the incident who died within a few weeks to tens (or even hundreds) of thousands.
The fanbois pick the lowest estimate to claim how safe it is, Greenpeace picks the other end, but actually…? Maybe even Huntly's particulates are competitive against a confidence interval that wide. Maybe not. But the fanbois have been wrong enough that they've had their shot.
@Drowsy: Greenpeace have a clear business model of overhyping fears about unseeable unknowable and insensible threats to drive donations.
Fossil fuel interests have apparently also been active in the shadows, flicking funding to environmental groups whose stances are slanted towards anti-nuclear, rather than having climate change at the front of their concerns.
Fossil oil and industry starting from 50's was engaging into campaigns against nuclear industry which it perceived it as a threat to their commercial interests. Organizations such as American Petroleum Institute, the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association and Marcellus Shale Coalition were engaged in anti-nuclear lobbying in late 2010's and from 2019 large fossil fuel suppliers started advertising campaigns portraying fossil gas as "perfect partner for renewables" (actual wording from Shell and Statoil advertisements). Fossil fuel companies such as Atlantic Richfield were also donors to environmental organizations with clear anti-nuclear stance such as Friends of the Earth. Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council are receiving grants from other fossil fuel companies. As of 2011 Greenpeace strategy Battle of Grids proposed gradual replacement of nuclear power by fossil gas plants which would provide "flexible backup for wind and solar power".
Greenpeace have a clear business model of overhyping fears about unseeable unknowable and insensible threats to drive donations.
Greenpeace could be "overhyping fears", but surely some threats that they are trying to raise awareness about are real enough – if the organisation was only, or even mostly, motivated by profit (i.e. the business model), then that would be disappointing.
Attenborough could also be overhyping fears to sell his latest book:
A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world – but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day – the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity.
Greenpeace will be viable only as long as there are still environments to degrade – once those ecosystems are beyond repair, the organisation’s influence will be (even more) negligible, and thanks to the Anthropocene the job's nearly done
Of course you're happy to run with a report at the lower end of the scale.
But my point is that death estimates of a dam collapse would not be so controversial to the same degree. It's difficult to argue that 50k more people drowned from some other cause that coincidentally occurred at the same time the deluge swept through a valley. But calculating cancer or congenital anomalies causes is wildly uncertain.
If you want something badly enough any argument will be augmented until it fits criteria. This maxime has brought us where we are with global warming. We assume that science is conducted impartially, but it isn't.
Apart from the possibility of an accident, however small and not worth the risk, the biggest issue is waste.
That’s Gerald S. Frankel’s matter-of-fact take on the thousands of metric tons of used solid fuel from nuclear power plants worldwide and the millions of liters of radioactive liquid waste from weapons production that sit in temporary storage containers in the US. While these waste materials, which can be harmful to human health and the environment, wait for a more permanent home, their containers age. In some cases, the aging containers have already begun leaking their toxic contents.
“It’s a societal problem that has been handed down to us from our parents’ generation,” says Frankel, who is a materials scientist at the Ohio State University. “And we are—more or less—handing it to our children.”
All these wastes can remain dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years.
Well, of cause NZ also is rated as high risk due to sitting on a fault line. I really cannot even understand that anybody could view nuclear power as a safe option.
How about starting to fit every house with solar panels for heating and hot water for a starter. The power generated through water and other renewables can be used for top up power of larger buildings and supply electric transport. Talking of which, get rail from ports to each larger city on and off load containers. I mean this is not new. What are we waiting for?
Yet another of the flaws of the old reactor designs is that they only extract maybe 1% of the available energy in their input fuel, the rest becomes the high-level dangerous waste. So actually extracting that energy by using the waste as fuel makes good economic sense, as well as vastly reducing the size of the waste problem. A lot of new reactor designs are indeed eyeing up that waste to use as fuel.
Nuclear power is a non renewable. NZ is on a fault line.
Waste:
When the uranium fuel is used up, usually after about 18 months, the spent rods are generally moved to deep pools of circulating water to cool down for about 10 years, though they remain dangerously radioactive for about 10,000 years.
But if the power lobby gets their hands on it….oh well, it is what it is.
The waste fuel rods wouldn't be dangerous waste if they were used for fuel in a different reactor design.
In terms of how much uranium or is available, yeah sure, supplies of land-based uranium for the really wasteful process used now are limited. But the new reactor designs would stretch that out way beyond any foreseeable future. Then the oceans hold another vast reservoir of uranium that only costs about four times as much to extract as land based uranium. In the context of operating a nuclear power plant, the cost of the uranium is negligible, and a 4x increase from USD50/pound to USD200/pound would disappear in the noise.
Then thorium is another viable nuclear fuel that is a lot more abundant. In many respects, it's better than uranium for civilian power generation, but it doesn't have the military side applications that have skewed so much of the nuclear industry's historical developemnt. China and India are working on thorium designs, to take advantage of their resources.
I'm quite confident that any organisation making the claim would be required to prove it to the regulators before approval. Inside a massively over-engineered containment vessel. With all the failure modes anyone could dream up thrown at it.
The fuel mix in a nuclear reactor is totally different to the one in a bomb. The fundamental physics ensures that a reactor simply cannot detonate in the way a bomb is intended to do.
To be fair to wags' concerns, Chernobyl and Fukushima did have some pretty big booms.
It takes somewhat detailed knowledge to understand that those booms came about because of the water used to remove the heat from the reactor, and wasn't actually a nuclear fission explosion
Chernobyl was really the nuclear industry's equivalent of the Titanic. A reactor that should never have been built, completely lacking a containment vessel and had reactivity control shortcomings that were never conveyed to the operators.
Yet despite this dramatic worst possible case failure, very few people remember that the other three reactors located right next door on the same site continued to be operated for many years afterward. As were a number of other RBMK reactors of the same design scattered around the FSU.
But as you say the actual explosion was not a nuclear one. It was a dramatic power surge that generated a massive steam explosion.
Fukushima was again not a nuclear event, but a hydrogen explosion caused when a loss of coolant flow allowed the water in the reactor to turn to steam and react with the fuel rod cladding.
In every major incident, including Three Mile Island, it was the use of water in the core (as both a moderator and coolant) that proved to be the vulnerability. This is why all 4th gen designs engineer it out; making an already very safe technology at least an order of magnitude better.
The absurd thing is this, coal powered power plants cause a huge number of excess deaths globally. The actual numbers are subject to some debate, but there is absolutely no question that they completely dwarf the hazard from all nuclear events combined. Closing nuclear plants while still running coal actually increases deaths quite substantially. For this the extreme anti-nuclear movement has a lot to answer for.
Yeah, I've come to the view that Greenpeace may have been just as harmful to the planet as the traditional villains, just in a different way.
They've been a remarkably successful marketing organisation, fomenting fears about vague undefinable and unprovable harms, and selling themselves as the answer that's fighting the menace. It's a good grift for those at the top creaming themselves a good living. But the world has paid a hefty price in an awful lot of avoidable coal and gas emissions.
As well as the harms they've done to our food supply by demonising GMOs, rather than better targeting the harmful practices of big ag companies.
I know you don't appreciate anecdotes that much, but for what it's worth:
I lived on top of a coal mine and had chronic asthma which saw me hospitalised several times and was constantly on pills, inhalers, injections etc. Within a month of moving away it cleared up and I've never had an attack since.
It was life threatening, and life was a misery, living on top of that mine.
What happens to these floating bombs if they run into a tsunami or a wandering category 5 cyclone?
It's often overlooked that during the Fukushima event, a number of other almost identical nuclear plants on the same coast suffered no damage whatsoever because their seawalls were at the correct height. It's absurdly easy to prevent this kind of loss. Moreover all 4th gen designs simply don't care if they lose coolant flow, which is the vulnerability common to the three major nuclear power plant incidents of the past 70 years.
We have, after Tiwai, enough electricity already to cope with user growth AND shift a third of our combustion vehicles.
And if you encourage RedLogix to warble on about nuclear power one more time I will on behalf of The Standard drive over to your place and strap you to your beehive.
I'd rather the electricity freed up from Tiwai first went to filling the gap from closing Huntly. Then satisfy user growth and electric vehicles from building new renewable generation.
Always happy to read your arguments on 4th gen nuclear plants, RL … both informative & concise … as opposed to Ad who unfortunately tends to warble on a wee bit, occasionally dribbling onto his keyboard.
I could start talking about CBRN Defence training, agent detection, Recon and mapping agent/ nuclear fallout. Or the Dark Art of Machine Gun Gunnery and Direct Fire Support.
Which btw i choose for my professional development instead of the more Gucci/ practical specialisations.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda … talk is cheap, Compadre … get typing on the Dark Arts of Machine Gunnery, Amigo, & get typing now. If nothing else, you'll appall, disgust & scandalise the Chardonnay Greens & assorted Critical Social Justice Theory Cult members… provoking the pompous & pretentious is always an amusing thing to witness in my book.
For anyone interested in getting some kind of perspective on actual radiation doses we all receive from various sources, xkcd (Randall Munroe) has put together this excellent chart:
The radiation hazard from a nuke power station nearby for a year is similar to eating a banana. For a coal station nearby, it's three times that (but the emitted mercury and other toxins are way scarier than the radiation). All three of which are absolutely tiny relative to the normal background radiation we all get just going about our daily lives.
on rnz morning report (link not on site)..grant robertson was most emphatic that they did not even consider a dollop of extra help for the poorest..over Xmas..
saying they already gave them $25 earlier in the year ..
uncaring bastards..that they are..
when are 'labour' people gonna get fucken angry about this..?
is this what they voted for..?
the country awash in corporate/rentier-class welfare..
but nothing for the poorest…
and isn't it such a relief that we have such a kind/caring prime minister/government..?
Labour ran as an election promise to not raise the benefits of any of our beneficiaries, and people saw that, shrugged and thought ' lucky i am not on a benefit ' and then they voted for them.
How much would a double payment of benefits at Xmas actually cost? Be a nice little stimulus for the economy ( well it could be sold as that!) and after all the corporate welfare a welcome rebalancing. To suggest that not raising benefits was a decisive plank in voting behaviour – maybe not.
Is it possible that the Government has decided to be stingy with the beneficiaries so as to starve the wealthy who would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the predictable trickle up? Cynicism and sarcasm know no bounds!
why don't the national party invite ardern and robertson to lead their party..?..
promise them safe electorate seats/multiple board seats..etc..etc..
then maybe some from labour..promising real transformation/the ditching of neoliberalism/to move to a social democracy like the higher taxes on the rich/support/housing for all scandanavian countries…can step up..
basically the sooner ardern..and her promises to do nothing..goes..the better..
(a conclusion she has drawn for herself..after all..)
and if she moved over to lead the tories…peddling a more 'caring'/empathy-drenched version of those bastards..of course..!..
all the neoliberal-incrementalists in labour…could go with her..
and no..we don't want robertson to take her place..
couldn’t the united nations use a global empathy-ambassador..?
Here's an early Xmas present, Phillip, before you get yet another dawn raid late night mod raid and possibly a compulsory 'holiday' – link to Morning Report article on Robertson's interview this morning which contains the link to the audio.
I’d like to acknowledge that you’ve made a real effort with improving the readability of your comments and I think it shows in more and better engagement overall.
My recent moderation notes for you were an attempt to notch you in the direction of using links as you have done in the past. I’m sure that the other readers here would also appreciate it.
Robertson encapsulated his (and the neoliberal) thinking when he talked about the 'housing market.' Houses as commodities to be bought and sold and to profit from, not housing as a basic right. My grandparents bought a house before the Great Depression and lived in the same house until they died in the 1970s. As far as I was aware, they never computed the increase in value of their home.
Robertson's language sums up this 'third way' centrist, do sfa Labour government.
Three major issues are prominent in this country: a meaningful response to climate change, the housing crisis and poverty (let’s not dress it up as ‘child poverty – poverty is poverty).
On all three this government has a mandate to act and to be decisive. They could easily take the country with them with radical actions to get on top of two of these and at least do something positive about the first.
As a long time leftie, [I tore up my Labour Party membership card in 1987 and have never rejoined] this period takes me back to the honeymoon period of 1984 when the Lange government, so apparently full of talent, had a mandate to act, and the imperative need to do a lot to counter the crisis inherited from Muldoon.
Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for – we all know and still suffer from how the ‘radicals’ of ’84 shook up the country.
But these days incremental change is not what is needed in the face of climate change.
However, much as I might wish for radical policies, I can’t see them coming from this ‘third way’ Labour government.
Labour is a centerist party, they only have to worry about their Center and right leaning block, the left will vote for them no matter what or won’t vote at all In this regard forget about a socialist lurch beyond the status quo that the Center and Center leaning right can just stomach
Without being rude to “Satty” and "Foreign Waka" an objection based on a perception NZ is the latter day bucolic Jerusalem of William Blake's poem is, well, a bit colonising. I think you need a better reason not to want nuclear than just "but I never saw a nuclear power plant in the background of any of the LOTR movies so I moved there".
I will not argue with you over my point of being against nuclear power. I have said more than enough and all I can do is as much as possible to mitigate any impact on the environment with what's available and affordable.
With that I shrug my shoulders and walk away. Its not worth getting agitated over.
I haven't read Blake or know his poem, my great grandparents were born here as was I.
I don't want nuclear power here.
I was persuaded a bit with James Lovelock's argument for nukes.
The idea that we are opposed to nuclear because the waste but conveniently ignore the invisible CO2 waste from gas and coal. The waste from gas and coal burning can kill immediately whereas the waste from nuclear will merely take years off your life.
Lovelock opined that he would happily store a lifetimes waste from nuclear on his verandah.
That was in the context of the UK, here not so much.
Bring on more geothermal and solar. Build resilience into the housing stock with good design and solar panels in every new build. Incentives for retro fitting solar….
from a conversation happening elsewhere, what do people think the value of having biological sex (not gender) recorded on birth certificates is? Would it matter if the state no longer recorded sex at birth?
Before too terribly long, the state may be sampling Dna at birth – which will render the question moot. But, with the reservation that it is observed phenotype, it is a useful element of personal identification.
Birth registrations are just an administrative tool. If changing details affects population-level equity discussions, then we need a conversation about why such a large proportion of the population does not seem to be adequately documented from day one.
At an individual level, the ability to change such bureaucratic details can prevent discrimination by authorities or anyone using that bureaucratic information.
Medical records are more interesting, but they also store data with much greater granularity so any relevant information would still be available.
If changing details affects population-level equity discussions, then we need a conversation about why such a large proportion of the population does not seem to be adequately documented from day one.
What large proportion of the population are you meaning?
It's not a changing details issue, but removing the category altogether i.e. no birth cert would record biological sex (data would still be collected by the state, but wouldn't be on the front end cert).
Oh, ok – interesting about the line of demarcation. So the specific proposal is not even taking sex off, just removing it from the public copy and putting it in with the rest of the administrative side. NZ possibly has a similar format, I wonder? That would sort out the generation of population pyramids and so on.
Anyhoo, if the information is still kept and simply not released publicly, I can't see a downside. I genuinely doubt it gets used from the public form very often at all, even as a transfer to other ID.
I was hoping someone might be able to provide a list of things that do require known biological sex. I'm guessing insurance is one of them, and I don't think a reasonable work around to not having sex on a BC is for insurance companies to access a govt database.
However I don't quite get the demarcation line thing (which was in reference to US certs and data collection).
I also don't have a good sense of how different parts of society determine biological sex now. Do insurance companies require a copy of a birth certificate or do they take people's word?
What about organisations offering something specific to being female? eg scholarships or positions?
The content of a birth registration form people fill in includes data for adminstrative use only (e.g. other children from the same parents). The birth certificate only lists some of that information (pretty sure my siblings aren't on my birth certificate, not that I've read it in years).
It looks like in the USA the form has a line labelled "everything above this line goes on the birth certificate" or somesuch.
Insurance is interesting. If a claimant was male and got ovarian cancer, might be an excuse to decline payout. But that's down to their application forms, not a birth certificate.
Gender is up to the individual and they can't make that decision at birth. Record biological sex at birth and then add gender if the individual so desires.
Recording the biological sex of a newborn on their birth certificate has (presumably) been considered 'useful' for hundreds of years, but maybe it was never actually useful, or maybe it is now less useful than it once was.
Making the case that such a record is not useful would be good. Not recording the biological sex of a newborn on their birth certificate would obviate the need for the state to consider applications to change the sex registered on a birth certificate, even if the biological sex of an individual cannot be changed (yet.) But maybe adults who wanted to have their biological sex added to their birth certificate could apply for their birth certificate to be amended accordingly.
I don't really understand why, but I remain uneasy that a (sizeable?) proportion of parents might be uneasy about having the biological sex of their child(ren) recorded on birth certificate(s).
Birth names are recorded – they can be changed later. One's birth date is, however, fixed – doesn't stop a sizeable proportion of the population from wanting to appear younger than their biological age. Not sure about the value of that 'want' – seems like a potential source of frustration and misery to me.
Thing is, birth certificates are a primary source for other forms of ID, some of which are used to confirm legislative requirements around age eligibility – drinking, guns, porn, smoking, prostitution, and so on. I only listed those because they sound like a hell of a night out.
I'm not sure there's any similar legislatively-required references to sex/gender that someone on the door needs to know right then and there for fear of breaking the law.
Thanks MF, sensible point about circumstances where proof of age is required; guess that's why DoB is on driver licences, and useful for more than just driving.
Still wonder if the 'Silver Tsunami' is (sometimes) up against more than just a lack of 'tech savvy' and general decrepitude – if one's (biological) sex is to be supplied only on a need-to-know basis, then how about age?
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1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
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The news from Sydney is concerning.
‘Covid 19 coronavirus: Sydney's Northern Beaches cluster explodes to 17 cases’
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/covid-19-coronavirus-sydneys-northern-beaches-cluster-explodes-to-17-cases/CMAWZSN6FNO3OHZCFV4KGDCGYQ/
[Fixed error with e-mail address]
Covid exploits crowds. Yes news is concerning.
A socialist, as opposed to a Green, solution to global warming has to consider floating mini-nuclear power stations. They could be the key to rapid de-carbonisation of power production in developing countries – and even here in NZ if you think about it. The design from this Danish company are apparently a modern Compact Molten Salt Reactor design that removes the threat of a meltdown in the event of an accident – it will simply shut down.
We could easily park one of these up in the Weiti river near Stillwater on the north shore (or where ever) and power 200,000+ homes with just one of these. This plant is 1TW so it would completely free us of any further need for wind or solar development and dramatically cut the cost of electricity for consumers, make NZ a 100% zero-emission energy producer are free up tons of existing capacity to produce Green hydrogen and power a rapid conversion to a completely ICB free vehicle fleet by 2045-50. Crucially, it would ensure the economy remained competitive and thus maintain our standard of living.
Imagine – completely emission free with a mix of nuclear/hydro/wind/solar! Surely it is the best stop gap measure until fusion comes along?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/17/floating-mini-nukes-could-power-countries-by-2025-says-startup
That technology would be be hugely transformational Sanctuary! If it isa as safe as they claim then why not?
The main reason nukes like this aren't going to come to New Zealand anytime soon is simply cost.
We 're in the very fortunate position of having plenty of hydro available on demand, so we can add as much very cheap wind and solar as we want and we can use the hydro to fill the gaps from the wind and solar. We've also got a decent amount of cheap geothermal providing very steady baseload power.
However, we may need to get used to the idea of nukes kinda like that powering visiting and local ships.
??? Really…. I have moved from the contaminated Northern Hemisphere. Thanks but no thanks.
Interestingly, one of my reasons to move to NZ was the close distance to several nuclear power plants in Europe (Germany and France). My neighbour worked in one of them and after hearing his "inside" stories you know that most promises / claims by the nuclear industry are worthless bullshit.
If they really believe they are 100% safe, they wouldn't have the nuclear power plants in limited liability sub-companies and they would be able to properly ensure them.
And there's still the nuclear waste from running and decommissioning the power plants. The German power companies immediately agreed to pay 5 billion Euros to the German government to rid themselves from such problems… similar to other polluting options it's all economical while the pollution is for free.
The CMSR technology that Seaborg (and about a dozen other similar companies) are going to use is completely different to the one your neighbour worked with.
All currently operating reactors are derivatives of the 1940's design that was used on the original Nautilus submarine; and yet despite this design dating from literally the dawn of the nuclear age, it remains by far the safest form of power generation. All the data points to this.
I've been following developments in this space very closely for quite a few years, all the innovation in 4th gen nuclear power leverages decades of science, materials and engineering innovation to deliver clean, abundant and reliable energy using wholly different technologies to existing plants.
The big limitation at present is not improving safety, reducing proliferation risk, nor even waste disposal … these are all solved problems. The critical challenge for nuclear at present is to get it's costs below that of coal and gas while meeting all regulatory expectations; and everyone working in this space is aware of this.
Thanks, RedLogix. At least you don't insult people's intelligence like Sanctuary did below (which obviously doesn't help to argue for nuclear power).
I am fully aware that the new generation reactors are not comparable (I am an engineer and worked mostly for power companies) and clearly understand the energy requirements of our comfortable daily lifestyle. I am not 100% against nuclear power.
I am just a lot more cautious around statements like:
Or
Or
As they sound exactly like the ones in the brochures of the original nuclear power plants… And it turned out they didn't meet reality. So excuse my scepticism.
Ad says I'm not allowed to waffle anymore 😄
Aren’t you contradicting yourself there?
I have recently come around to the conclusion that we are going to have to bite the bullet and adopt some form of nuclear energy in this country.
If nothing else millsy you never leave anyone in doubt as to where you stand … 🙂
Australia and NZ are rather uniquely positioned in that we can probably delay migrating to nuclear power for quite a few decades yet … we have sufficient renewable resource to lean on so that we don't have to be on the leading edge of any new nuclear tech.
Agreed. NZ has the luxury to see how the new nuclear power plants you mentioned above work out. It will also be interesting to see if there are more efficient or completely new renewable energy sources available in a couple of decades time (we might not require nuclear power by then).
What happens to these floating bombs if they run into a tsunami or a wandering category 5 cyclone?
A big design criterion of the latest generations of reactor designs is to make them "walk away safe". This means that the result of loss of control function leads to the reactions stopping and the core cooling purely from the laws of physics. So they can't go boom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety
This is a huge contrast to the early reactor designs from the 50s and 60s like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, that all required continuous active control to prevent the heat generation running away. When cooling and control was lost through an operator making the wrong response because of a crap control interface (Three Mile Island), or because of running a badly designed test with the wrong unprepared staff in the control room (Chernobyl) or wiping out the electrical controls and backup with a tsunami (Fukushima), then the old designs allowed the core to heat up from residual decay, eventually leading to superheated water reacting with zirconium to separate into hydrogen and oxygen and then going boom, and/or meltdown.
Newer designs have fixed that conceptual fault of requiring continuous active control for safety. Part of the reason for the dangerous designs in the 50s and 60s is back then there was much less knowledge and concern about what could go wrong. In my opinion, that pendulum has swung too far the other way, where we're now way over-concerned about very very small risks from nuclear, while ignoring much greater continuous harms from other forms of power generation. Especially the harms from coal and gas.
"However, weak driving forces that power many passive safety features can pose significant challenges to effectiveness of a passive system, particularly in the short term following an accident."
"IAEA explicitly uses the following caveat:[2]
Ah, blind optimism….that origin of so many disasters.
That IAEA quote seems absurdly obtuse in the light of modern methods and I note is derived from a document dated 1991.
It entirely focusses on the PWR technology of the day, completely predates any 4th generation designs, and looks irrelevant to any discussion about them.
In practical realistic terms, the choice between nuclear and what we're accepting right now comes down to bedwetting about some hypothetical risks that engineers put massive amounts of effort into eliminating because they know if those risks turns into a disaster, their industry is gone, or there's the tons of mercury and other toxins dumped into the atmosphere and rivers from the likes of Huntly, Wairakei etc.
Personally, if I were offered the choice of having a nuke just around the corner from my place in exchange for eliminating Huntly and eliminating coal use at Glenbrook, I'd jump at it. There's no way I'd live within 200km in the northeast quadrant from either Huntly or Glenbrook, because of their emissions and prevailing winds. Since I'm northwest of them, and winds from the southeast are rare in Auckland, I can somewhat unhappily accept that occasionally I'm downwind of their emissions.
Putting faith in engineers is one thing.
Putting faith in engineers and operators for the next 50-70 years is another thing entirely.
Fukushima wasn't just the result of an engineering boo-boo. It was the result of things like waste fuel mismanagement that would have been dismissed at the time of construction as "hypothetical risks that engineers put massive amounts of effort into eliminating".
Maybe the advertised safety accurately reflects the actual safety under standard human operating conditions this time. But the nuclear industry has been notoriously unreliable in this regard, for decades.
Put simply, this is why all 4th gen designs remove plant operator from any direct control of the core. That's the meaning of the term 'walk away safe'.
Yeah, until someone stockpiles 30 years of old fuel rods or some equivalent bs.
Keep using the same basic script for long enough, one day it might be true.
And yet, even with the extreme carelessness and obvious flaws of past designs, and the sloppiness of some operators, the actual harms from nuclear generation are tiny. The harms from future designs where safety is taken much more seriously can be expected to be much much less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll
In comparison, look at the harms from other forms of generation:
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/?sh=2d942cc4709b
Or if you want to just look at individual big disasters, hydro has had the biggest, but there have been plenty of other really big non-nuke energy disasters
https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/04/11/what-about-chernobyl-worlds-deadliest-energy-accidents-in-perspective/
Thing about radiation is that it's got a much less demonstrable mechanism of harm than a hydro dam bursting.
But please, keep talking about how the obvious flaws (that were claimed to be completely safe at the time of construction) barely did any harm, in order to make folk feel better about tomorrow's obvious flaws unexpectedly causing another problem that you assure us can't happen.
I fully understand the reaction most people do have around ionising radiation; it's the invisible nature of it that I think spooks most people. Hell I've personally walked around an industrial plant carrying in my bare hands a relatively powerful Kr-85 beta source. I was totally safe, but looking back I couldn't help but feel a strong prickly sense of danger. In no sense can I be dismissive of this natural reaction.
At the same time I sincerely believe that this 'unseeable, unknowable, and insensible' quality has been exploited by various players to push agendas that have little to do with actual safety.
This is longer than I'd like to suggest at 54min, but it's an excellent presentation on the history of the LNT (Linear No Threshold) hypothesis, that has been frequently misused by scaremongers.
I hope this conveys a better sense of perspective on the nature of radiation, why it must be respected, but not necessarily feared.
RL, could you list (in your sincere opinion; no need for explanation) the "various players" and their respective "agendas" that have little to do with (actual) safety?
Suppose we’re all players, each with our own sincere beliefs and agendas.
I should have expressed myself more clearly: when a dam bursts, if you find a drowned person in the debris, that's pretty clear.
Estimates for Chernobyl go from only a few dozen directly involved in the incident who died within a few weeks to tens (or even hundreds) of thousands.
The fanbois pick the lowest estimate to claim how safe it is, Greenpeace picks the other end, but actually…? Maybe even Huntly's particulates are competitive against a confidence interval that wide. Maybe not. But the fanbois have been wrong enough that they've had their shot.
Chernobyl has been very thoroughly studied by a UN task force. Hundreds of experts from dozens of institutions, no cover up was possible.
I'm happy to run with that report.
@Drowsy: Greenpeace have a clear business model of overhyping fears about unseeable unknowable and insensible threats to drive donations.
Fossil fuel interests have apparently also been active in the shadows, flicking funding to environmental groups whose stances are slanted towards anti-nuclear, rather than having climate change at the front of their concerns.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/?sh=7f4a19a07453
@Andre
Greenpeace could be "overhyping fears", but surely some threats that they are trying to raise awareness about are real enough – if the organisation was only, or even mostly, motivated by profit (i.e. the business model), then that would be disappointing.
Attenborough could also be overhyping fears to sell his latest book:
You may be on to something regarding the shadowy influence of fossil fuel businesses – their real political influence (via 'lobbying') dwarfs that of Greenpeace and/or Attenborough, again IMHO.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/fossil-fuel-industry-doubles-donations-to-major-parties-in-four-years-report-shows
Greenpeace will be viable only as long as there are still environments to degrade – once those ecosystems are beyond repair, the organisation’s influence will be (even more) negligible, and thanks to the Anthropocene the job's nearly done
Krypton is a gas!?
Of course you're happy to run with a report at the lower end of the scale.
But my point is that death estimates of a dam collapse would not be so controversial to the same degree. It's difficult to argue that 50k more people drowned from some other cause that coincidentally occurred at the same time the deluge swept through a valley. But calculating cancer or congenital anomalies causes is wildly uncertain.
If you want something badly enough any argument will be augmented until it fits criteria. This maxime has brought us where we are with global warming. We assume that science is conducted impartially, but it isn't.
Apart from the possibility of an accident, however small and not worth the risk, the biggest issue is waste.
On nuclear waste:
https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
That’s Gerald S. Frankel’s matter-of-fact take on the thousands of metric tons of used solid fuel from nuclear power plants worldwide and the millions of liters of radioactive liquid waste from weapons production that sit in temporary storage containers in the US. While these waste materials, which can be harmful to human health and the environment, wait for a more permanent home, their containers age. In some cases, the aging containers have already begun leaking their toxic contents.
“It’s a societal problem that has been handed down to us from our parents’ generation,” says Frankel, who is a materials scientist at the Ohio State University. “And we are—more or less—handing it to our children.”
All these wastes can remain dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years.
Well, of cause NZ also is rated as high risk due to sitting on a fault line. I really cannot even understand that anybody could view nuclear power as a safe option.
How about starting to fit every house with solar panels for heating and hot water for a starter. The power generated through water and other renewables can be used for top up power of larger buildings and supply electric transport. Talking of which, get rail from ports to each larger city on and off load containers. I mean this is not new. What are we waiting for?
Yet another of the flaws of the old reactor designs is that they only extract maybe 1% of the available energy in their input fuel, the rest becomes the high-level dangerous waste. So actually extracting that energy by using the waste as fuel makes good economic sense, as well as vastly reducing the size of the waste problem. A lot of new reactor designs are indeed eyeing up that waste to use as fuel.
https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/90546-radioactive-waste-fuels-nextgeneration-reactors
Andre
Nuclear power is a non renewable. NZ is on a fault line.
Waste:
When the uranium fuel is used up, usually after about 18 months, the spent rods are generally moved to deep pools of circulating water to cool down for about 10 years, though they remain dangerously radioactive for about 10,000 years.
But if the power lobby gets their hands on it….oh well, it is what it is.
The waste fuel rods wouldn't be dangerous waste if they were used for fuel in a different reactor design.
In terms of how much uranium or is available, yeah sure, supplies of land-based uranium for the really wasteful process used now are limited. But the new reactor designs would stretch that out way beyond any foreseeable future. Then the oceans hold another vast reservoir of uranium that only costs about four times as much to extract as land based uranium. In the context of operating a nuclear power plant, the cost of the uranium is negligible, and a 4x increase from USD50/pound to USD200/pound would disappear in the noise.
Then thorium is another viable nuclear fuel that is a lot more abundant. In many respects, it's better than uranium for civilian power generation, but it doesn't have the military side applications that have skewed so much of the nuclear industry's historical developemnt. China and India are working on thorium designs, to take advantage of their resources.
Yep, money, resources etc… as expected. Lets just do more of the same just a tad more risky.
Innovation is not imitation.
'walk away safe' ..
..must be on the shortlist for a gold-spin award..
surely..?
It's a design objective.
I'm quite confident that any organisation making the claim would be required to prove it to the regulators before approval. Inside a massively over-engineered containment vessel. With all the failure modes anyone could dream up thrown at it.
floating bombs
The fuel mix in a nuclear reactor is totally different to the one in a bomb. The fundamental physics ensures that a reactor simply cannot detonate in the way a bomb is intended to do.
To be fair to wags' concerns, Chernobyl and Fukushima did have some pretty big booms.
It takes somewhat detailed knowledge to understand that those booms came about because of the water used to remove the heat from the reactor, and wasn't actually a nuclear fission explosion
Yup.
Chernobyl was really the nuclear industry's equivalent of the Titanic. A reactor that should never have been built, completely lacking a containment vessel and had reactivity control shortcomings that were never conveyed to the operators.
Yet despite this dramatic worst possible case failure, very few people remember that the other three reactors located right next door on the same site continued to be operated for many years afterward. As were a number of other RBMK reactors of the same design scattered around the FSU.
But as you say the actual explosion was not a nuclear one. It was a dramatic power surge that generated a massive steam explosion.
Fukushima was again not a nuclear event, but a hydrogen explosion caused when a loss of coolant flow allowed the water in the reactor to turn to steam and react with the fuel rod cladding.
In every major incident, including Three Mile Island, it was the use of water in the core (as both a moderator and coolant) that proved to be the vulnerability. This is why all 4th gen designs engineer it out; making an already very safe technology at least an order of magnitude better.
The absurd thing is this, coal powered power plants cause a huge number of excess deaths globally. The actual numbers are subject to some debate, but there is absolutely no question that they completely dwarf the hazard from all nuclear events combined. Closing nuclear plants while still running coal actually increases deaths quite substantially. For this the extreme anti-nuclear movement has a lot to answer for.
Yeah, I've come to the view that Greenpeace may have been just as harmful to the planet as the traditional villains, just in a different way.
They've been a remarkably successful marketing organisation, fomenting fears about vague undefinable and unprovable harms, and selling themselves as the answer that's fighting the menace. It's a good grift for those at the top creaming themselves a good living. But the world has paid a hefty price in an awful lot of avoidable coal and gas emissions.
As well as the harms they've done to our food supply by demonising GMOs, rather than better targeting the harmful practices of big ag companies.
I know you don't appreciate anecdotes that much, but for what it's worth:
I lived on top of a coal mine and had chronic asthma which saw me hospitalised several times and was constantly on pills, inhalers, injections etc. Within a month of moving away it cleared up and I've never had an attack since.
It was life threatening, and life was a misery, living on top of that mine.
I didnt actually think they go boom I did realise they just melt down and leave a hot sticky patch.
What happens to these floating bombs if they run into a tsunami or a wandering category 5 cyclone?
It's often overlooked that during the Fukushima event, a number of other almost identical nuclear plants on the same coast suffered no damage whatsoever because their seawalls were at the correct height. It's absurdly easy to prevent this kind of loss. Moreover all 4th gen designs simply don't care if they lose coolant flow, which is the vulnerability common to the three major nuclear power plant incidents of the past 70 years.
As for Cat 5 cyclones, again these are large robust steel structures, with massive ballast. All the designers I've listened to are acutely aware of the need to protect from this kind of obvious threat.
We have, after Tiwai, enough electricity already to cope with user growth AND shift a third of our combustion vehicles.
And if you encourage RedLogix to warble on about nuclear power one more time I will on behalf of The Standard drive over to your place and strap you to your beehive.
I'd rather the electricity freed up from Tiwai first went to filling the gap from closing Huntly. Then satisfy user growth and electric vehicles from building new renewable generation.
the nuke-pimps are out in force today…
best to just chant the wind/solar mantra at them…
No argument from me, I'm quite happy to see how far the Solar/Wind/Battery tech can be taken. I'm not here to throw rocks at it.
But be aware it has it's own fundamental limitations too.
Andre – that's exactly what's gonna happen…
Honestly I do my best to avoid the n-word much of the time. It wasn't me who started it this time …
And yes you are perfectly correct, the NZ context for nuclear is quite different to the global one.
🙂
Always happy to read your arguments on 4th gen nuclear plants, RL … both informative & concise … as opposed to Ad who unfortunately tends to warble on a wee bit, occasionally dribbling onto his keyboard.
I could start talking about CBRN Defence training, agent detection, Recon and mapping agent/ nuclear fallout. Or the Dark Art of Machine Gun Gunnery and Direct Fire Support.
Which btw i choose for my professional development instead of the more Gucci/ practical specialisations.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda … talk is cheap, Compadre … get typing on the Dark Arts of Machine Gunnery, Amigo, & get typing now. If nothing else, you'll appall, disgust & scandalise the Chardonnay Greens & assorted Critical Social Justice Theory Cult members… provoking the pompous & pretentious is always an amusing thing to witness in my book.
For anyone interested in getting some kind of perspective on actual radiation doses we all receive from various sources, xkcd (Randall Munroe) has put together this excellent chart:
https://xkcd.com/radiation/
The radiation hazard from a nuke power station nearby for a year is similar to eating a banana. For a coal station nearby, it's three times that (but the emitted mercury and other toxins are way scarier than the radiation). All three of which are absolutely tiny relative to the normal background radiation we all get just going about our daily lives.
on rnz morning report (link not on site)..grant robertson was most emphatic that they did not even consider a dollop of extra help for the poorest..over Xmas..
saying they already gave them $25 earlier in the year ..
uncaring bastards..that they are..
when are 'labour' people gonna get fucken angry about this..?
is this what they voted for..?
the country awash in corporate/rentier-class welfare..
but nothing for the poorest…
and isn't it such a relief that we have such a kind/caring prime minister/government..?
Labour ran as an election promise to not raise the benefits of any of our beneficiaries, and people saw that, shrugged and thought ' lucky i am not on a benefit ' and then they voted for them.
pretty much. Well done NZ.
How much would a double payment of benefits at Xmas actually cost? Be a nice little stimulus for the economy ( well it could be sold as that!) and after all the corporate welfare a welcome rebalancing. To suggest that not raising benefits was a decisive plank in voting behaviour – maybe not.
Is it possible that the Government has decided to be stingy with the beneficiaries so as to starve the wealthy who would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the predictable trickle up? Cynicism and sarcasm know no bounds!
why don't the national party invite ardern and robertson to lead their party..?..
promise them safe electorate seats/multiple board seats..etc..etc..
then maybe some from labour..promising real transformation/the ditching of neoliberalism/to move to a social democracy like the higher taxes on the rich/support/housing for all scandanavian countries…can step up..
basically the sooner ardern..and her promises to do nothing..goes..the better..
(a conclusion she has drawn for herself..after all..)
and if she moved over to lead the tories…peddling a more 'caring'/empathy-drenched version of those bastards..of course..!..
all the neoliberal-incrementalists in labour…could go with her..
and no..we don't want robertson to take her place..
couldn’t the united nations use a global empathy-ambassador..?
Here's an early Xmas present, Phillip, before you get yet another
dawn raidlate night mod raid and possibly a compulsory 'holiday' – link to Morning Report article on Robertson's interview this morning which contains the link to the audio.First half of the audio to about 4.30 mins is re Ihumatao, then a general discussion about housing etc with a specific question re giving beneficiaries a boost for Xmas at about 7 mins with Robertson then going into the usual spin as to what they have done with the $25, etc …https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018777733/ihumatao-land-will-be-used-for-housing-grant-robertson
thanks..
I’d like to acknowledge that you’ve made a real effort with improving the readability of your comments and I think it shows in more and better engagement overall.
My recent moderation notes for you were an attempt to notch you in the direction of using links as you have done in the past. I’m sure that the other readers here would also appreciate it.
FWIW, I respect you for that.
chrs..
Robertson encapsulated his (and the neoliberal) thinking when he talked about the 'housing market.' Houses as commodities to be bought and sold and to profit from, not housing as a basic right. My grandparents bought a house before the Great Depression and lived in the same house until they died in the 1970s. As far as I was aware, they never computed the increase in value of their home.
Robertson's language sums up this 'third way' centrist, do sfa Labour government.
If David Parker were Finance Minister he would be better on policy; less neo liberal.
yes..but..how 'less neoliberal'..?
I had him down as a apologist for the whole sorry mess..
I think he will listen/is more biddable than the current incumbent.
Three major issues are prominent in this country: a meaningful response to climate change, the housing crisis and poverty (let’s not dress it up as ‘child poverty – poverty is poverty).
On all three this government has a mandate to act and to be decisive. They could easily take the country with them with radical actions to get on top of two of these and at least do something positive about the first.
As a long time leftie, [I tore up my Labour Party membership card in 1987 and have never rejoined] this period takes me back to the honeymoon period of 1984 when the Lange government, so apparently full of talent, had a mandate to act, and the imperative need to do a lot to counter the crisis inherited from Muldoon.
Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for – we all know and still suffer from how the ‘radicals’ of ’84 shook up the country.
But these days incremental change is not what is needed in the face of climate change.
However, much as I might wish for radical policies, I can’t see them coming from this ‘third way’ Labour government.
Labour is a centerist party, they only have to worry about their Center and right leaning block, the left will vote for them no matter what or won’t vote at all In this regard forget about a socialist lurch beyond the status quo that the Center and Center leaning right can just stomach
Red-where "Centrist" is code for not rocking the neo-liberal order?
Without being rude to “Satty” and "Foreign Waka" an objection based on a perception NZ is the latter day bucolic Jerusalem of William Blake's poem is, well, a bit colonising. I think you need a better reason not to want nuclear than just "but I never saw a nuclear power plant in the background of any of the LOTR movies so I moved there".
where is that lotr quote from..?
I will not argue with you over my point of being against nuclear power. I have said more than enough and all I can do is as much as possible to mitigate any impact on the environment with what's available and affordable.
With that I shrug my shoulders and walk away. Its not worth getting agitated over.
I haven't read Blake or know his poem, my great grandparents were born here as was I.
I don't want nuclear power here.
I was persuaded a bit with James Lovelock's argument for nukes.
The idea that we are opposed to nuclear because the waste but conveniently ignore the invisible CO2 waste from gas and coal. The waste from gas and coal burning can kill immediately whereas the waste from nuclear will merely take years off your life.
Lovelock opined that he would happily store a lifetimes waste from nuclear on his verandah.
That was in the context of the UK, here not so much.
Bring on more geothermal and solar. Build resilience into the housing stock with good design and solar panels in every new build. Incentives for retro fitting solar….
I shall not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword slip from my hand
Until we see Jerusalem
On England's green and pleasant land.
(singalong together)
from a conversation happening elsewhere, what do people think the value of having biological sex (not gender) recorded on birth certificates is? Would it matter if the state no longer recorded sex at birth?
wouldn't they get messed-up/all crinkly..?
from all the thrashing about..?
Yes, Phil. My thoughts exactly!
the set-up for my 'boom!-boom!' one-liner has seen an edit..
I wonder why..?
I thought it was funny to do so.
no…you leached the funny out of it..
for late arrivals..the original set-up was:
'what do people see the value in having sex on birth certificates..?'
(there..!..fixed it..!.. the gods of comedy will be pleased..)
you thought yours was funny, I thought mine was /shrug.
Isn't "having sex on birth certificates" kinda … kinky?
Nope, birth certificates can be almost as effective as condoms or as much a mood killer as listening to Kanye; not kinky at all.
Before too terribly long, the state may be sampling Dna at birth – which will render the question moot. But, with the reservation that it is observed phenotype, it is a useful element of personal identification.
Useful how?
It rapidly determines that half of the population is not you.
what situations is it necessary for the state to do this?
Birth registrations are just an administrative tool. If changing details affects population-level equity discussions, then we need a conversation about why such a large proportion of the population does not seem to be adequately documented from day one.
At an individual level, the ability to change such bureaucratic details can prevent discrimination by authorities or anyone using that bureaucratic information.
Medical records are more interesting, but they also store data with much greater granularity so any relevant information would still be available.
What large proportion of the population are you meaning?
It's not a changing details issue, but removing the category altogether i.e. no birth cert would record biological sex (data would still be collected by the state, but wouldn't be on the front end cert).
https://sci-hub.se/10.1056/NEJMp2025974
Oh, ok – interesting about the line of demarcation. So the specific proposal is not even taking sex off, just removing it from the public copy and putting it in with the rest of the administrative side. NZ possibly has a similar format, I wonder? That would sort out the generation of population pyramids and so on.
Anyhoo, if the information is still kept and simply not released publicly, I can't see a downside. I genuinely doubt it gets used from the public form very often at all, even as a transfer to other ID.
I was hoping someone might be able to provide a list of things that do require known biological sex. I'm guessing insurance is one of them, and I don't think a reasonable work around to not having sex on a BC is for insurance companies to access a govt database.
However I don't quite get the demarcation line thing (which was in reference to US certs and data collection).
I also don't have a good sense of how different parts of society determine biological sex now. Do insurance companies require a copy of a birth certificate or do they take people's word?
What about organisations offering something specific to being female? eg scholarships or positions?
The content of a birth registration form people fill in includes data for adminstrative use only (e.g. other children from the same parents). The birth certificate only lists some of that information (pretty sure my siblings aren't on my birth certificate, not that I've read it in years).
It looks like in the USA the form has a line labelled "everything above this line goes on the birth certificate" or somesuch.
Insurance is interesting. If a claimant was male and got ovarian cancer, might be an excuse to decline payout. But that's down to their application forms, not a birth certificate.
Gender is up to the individual and they can't make that decision at birth. Record biological sex at birth and then add gender if the individual so desires.
that doesn't answer the question.
Recording the biological sex of a newborn on their birth certificate has (presumably) been considered 'useful' for hundreds of years, but maybe it was never actually useful, or maybe it is now less useful than it once was.
Making the case that such a record is not useful would be good. Not recording the biological sex of a newborn on their birth certificate would obviate the need for the state to consider applications to change the sex registered on a birth certificate, even if the biological sex of an individual cannot be changed (yet.) But maybe adults who wanted to have their biological sex added to their birth certificate could apply for their birth certificate to be amended accordingly.
https://www.justice.govt.nz/family/change-sex-on-your-birth-certificate/
I don't really understand why, but I remain uneasy that a (sizeable?) proportion of parents might be uneasy about having the biological sex of their child(ren) recorded on birth certificate(s).
Birth names are recorded – they can be changed later. One's birth date is, however, fixed – doesn't stop a sizeable proportion of the population from wanting to appear younger than their biological age. Not sure about the value of that 'want' – seems like a potential source of frustration and misery to me.
Good-oh; maybe we should be removing birth dates from birth certificates to combat ageism? After all, you're only as old as you feel.
Thing is, birth certificates are a primary source for other forms of ID, some of which are used to confirm legislative requirements around age eligibility – drinking, guns, porn, smoking, prostitution, and so on. I only listed those because they sound like a hell of a night out.
I'm not sure there's any similar legislatively-required references to sex/gender that someone on the door needs to know right then and there for fear of breaking the law.
That's Hamilton for ya 😆
Thanks MF, sensible point about circumstances where proof of age is required; guess that's why DoB is on driver licences, and useful for more than just driving.
Still wonder if the 'Silver Tsunami' is (sometimes) up against more than just a lack of 'tech savvy' and general decrepitude – if one's (biological) sex is to be supplied only on a need-to-know basis, then how about age?
https://www.hrdive.com/news/ageism-the-last-acceptable-bias-is-rampant-at-work-aarp-says/569649/