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. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
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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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64R2MYUt394
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/