Personally I think nuclear power would be bad for NZ. What would we do with all the waste products?
Also I think there is no need to spend all that money on nuclear power. If you invested the cost of a nuclear power plant in sustainable generation methods (wind, solar, wave, tidal) and on methods to help reduce power consumption (insulation, solar hot water, passive solar building designs) you would end up with a much better long-term result than building one more power station.
I think one of our biggest problems as a country is that we always seem to be looking at ways of producing more power, rather than ways of making better use of what we already have. It's like pouring water into a bucket with a big hole in the bottom. We're forever trying to find new (expensive, high-tech) ways of pouring more water into the bucket... How about plugging the hole first?!
Submitted by Lindis on 8 June 2009 16:35:07
Oh and another thought...
It seems to me that the current weakest link in our electricity system is not generation, but distribution. When you live in a long, narrow country that's prone to earthquakes you end up with a vulnerable power grid. (Well actually it's more like a line than a grid.) So concentrating all your generation in one place is a very risky strategy.
I much prefer the idea of distributed, small-scale power generation where most of the output is used in the local area. It's much less prone to catastrophic failure, and there is much less waste than when the power is transmitted over long distances.
Comments
Personally I think nuclear power would be bad for NZ. What would we do with all the waste products?
Also I think there is no need to spend all that money on nuclear power. If you invested the cost of a nuclear power plant in sustainable generation methods (wind, solar, wave, tidal) and on methods to help reduce power consumption (insulation, solar hot water, passive solar building designs) you would end up with a much better long-term result than building one more power station.
I think one of our biggest problems as a country is that we always seem to be looking at ways of producing more power, rather than ways of making better use of what we already have. It's like pouring water into a bucket with a big hole in the bottom. We're forever trying to find new (expensive, high-tech) ways of pouring more water into the bucket... How about plugging the hole first?!
Submitted by Lindis on 8 June 2009 16:35:07
Oh and another thought...
It seems to me that the current weakest link in our electricity system is not generation, but distribution. When you live in a long, narrow country that's prone to earthquakes you end up with a vulnerable power grid. (Well actually it's more like a line than a grid.) So concentrating all your generation in one place is a very risky strategy.
I much prefer the idea of distributed, small-scale power generation where most of the output is used in the local area. It's much less prone to catastrophic failure, and there is much less waste than when the power is transmitted over long distances.
Submitted by Lindis on 8 June 2009 16:43:11