Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to SteveH,
Whether there is a will do so is the real question
Ultimately I don't think it's a will that NZ is ever going to have to seriously examine.
We have other options, ones that get caught on "It ruins my view" NIMBYism rather than ones that get caught on "It could destroy our entire agricultural sector and turn us into an emerging economy overnight. And it ruins my view!" NIMBYism.
That renders the question of whether nuclear power can be made truly safe somewhat moot in the NZ context. I'm far from convinced that it can be.Oh, as for earthquake design, a lot of lessons will be learned from Christchurch, and Japan - where, I'll point out, a lot of very tall buildings remained completely intact and inhabitable. So, yes, buildings do get subjected to earthquakes to determine if they survive. If they do the design passed, but if they don't at least the land isn't irretrievably contaminated. Earthquakes happen all over the world, every year, serious ones at least a couple of times a decade. How often do nuclear reactors get subjected to meltdown containment tests?
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to SteveH,
3 Mile Island was a meltdown, so yes, it’s been tested
That’s arguable. It wasn’t a melting of the entire mass of fissile material.
When I asked if it’d been tested, I meant has anyone actually tried setting up a runaway, uncontrolled reaction that results in complete core meltdown in order to validate this supposed design strength? And the answer, of course, is no, because nobody would be that stupid. After all, what do you do if you’re wrong?I’ve also seen suggestions that the only reason 3MI didn’t pop its top was that, being in the approach path for a B52 base, the containment building and vessel had been built significantly stronger than the norm to withstand a possible crashing heavy bomber - IOW, forces in excess of the loaded 747 that is the standard for the US. We’ll never know if that’s true, but if that’s the degree of strengthening that’s needed to be certain can we actually honestly say that it’s feasible to contain a reactor such that it cannot catastrophically release?
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to BenWilson,
The way they’re designed now, they could actually have a core meltdown, and not release harmful levels of radiation. The plant would be fucked, is all.
And this has been tested? No, didn't think so.
Theory is great, in theory. In practice, we haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of predicting and controlling all the possible ways that Mother Nature can fuck with our best-laid plans. -
Hard News: What Now?, in reply to BenWilson,
Well, we had a pretty bad one last year in the extraction of coal, most of which is for power plants, I presume.
You presume wrong. The coal from Pike River is mostly used for making steel.
And even if it was used for power generation, that's not a power generation accident. That's like saying that someone drowning in a hydro dam is a power generation accident.Yes, if a very poorly designed plant had the biggest nuclear disaster in human history
It wouldn't need to be as big as Chernobyl for that to happen. Scotland is a hell of a lot further away from Chernobyl than Bluff is from Cape Reinga.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
If I stand at my front door and look north, I can see two petrol stations and an awful lot of light industrial buildings and big box retail. None of which I’d like to be downwind of if they were uncontrollably ablaze after an 8.9 magnitude quake.
When was the last time any of the above laid semi-permanent waste to an area? Petrol stations burn, industrial burns, life goes on. Look at Southdown Freezing Works, which burned several times, caused a lot of aggravation for the locals when it did, but once the fire was out it was all done. The hazard was gone.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to BenWilson,
There are disaster cases in most power generation sources.
Yes, there are. NZ has been quite fortunate in having had none of significance.
That said, one needs to consider the worst-case scenario when looking at these things. The worst that can go wrong with hydro is a catastrophic dam failure, but water goes away and structures can then be rebuilt immediately the ground dries out. Except for people in the immediate downstream, there's time to give a warning to evacuate. With thermal, you can potentially have a dust/gas explosion, which could level a moderate distance around the plant but then the damage is done. Geothermal, the same.
All of those things can go wrong, and have overseas, but there is no long-term environmental "scorched earth" that irretrievably lays waste to potentially large swathes of the country. An accident at a nuclear plant at one end of NZ, with the wind blowing the fallout along the country, could render nearly the entire nation uninhabitable.ETA: And NZ does have all those other options, plus solar, wind and tidal, all of which have proven to be remarkably safe. Nuclear for NZ is not, unlike Japan, an option that must be considered in the absence of much credible alternative.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Andre Alessi,
These events don’t say anything about the safety of nuclear power in non-exceptional situations.
No, they don't. But a seismically-active country such as NZ needs to be cognisant of the risks associated with nuclear power coupled with being earthquake-prone. All the more so when NZ has no real need for nuclear power, in the presence of ample opportunity for hydro, tidal, wind and geothermal generation.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Stephen Judd,
I replied asking what she did mean. I have not heard back.
I hope you'll be following that up with the Ombudsmen if you haven't heard anything after 20 working days. I have asked for clarification, even offering her four possible explanations, and will definitely be going further if she doesn't respond. Ministers are required to respond to questions.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Russell Brown,
How can reposting a ministerial communication, in full and unedited, be in any way grey? Is Collins that stupid that she'd sue someone for circulating an official email?
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Che Tibby,
Speaking of ruffled feathers, still no sign of a copy of Collins’ email. Anyone?
not a dot.
hasn’t been 20 working days yet though.
I was referring to the one mentioned over the weekend as saying nasty things about the residents of PAS, not any official response. Not holding my breath that one will be eventuating without a complaint to the Ombudsmen.