So When Does Nuclear Power Enter the Polity?

On Afternoons with Jim Mora this afternnon (RNZ) he shamed his panelist Richard Griffin into fawning silence for daring to query the lack of discussion regarding nuclear power as an option in New Zealand. Mora said - should I read the flood of emails we received since you mentioned considering nuclear power Richard...

WTF is it with NZ and nuclear power?

We are facing a power crisis - short, medium and long term, many/most think we have climate change underway because of the release from long term sequestration of carbon. Only today Mallard boasted that the electricity crisis was not apon us because (inter alia) he had a stockpile of coal at Huntly (which National neglected to do last time...) ...Good one Trev - that'll help NZ meet Kyoto, stop global warming etc etc.

I know we hate the Americans (but don't know why) - so why not try these guys at Pebble Bed Modulators Reactors for safe nuclear power - this is a South African Government initiative.

Think of the brownie points at the UN Helen. Nice one?

Safe, low scale, using safe processes that have passive safety systems built in to the reactor and hence avoid human decision-making and intervention. This style and scale of plant can be located close to the demand sites. ie no need to run HVA cables up the North Island - just put it in Mt Albert.

South Africa faces increasing demand of 20,000MW by 2025 on top of their installed capacity of 39,000MW. They seem to be on to what needs to done to avoid a burning fossil fuels. We don't. We won't face the decisions or discussion and close our ears to anything that is not wind, sun or rain operated - all of which we have bugger all of at the moment.