Skip to main content

New Zealanders Won't Be Talking About Nuclear Energy in 2007

By Eric McErlain
Why? Because the Royal Society of New Zealand wants to talk about clean coal instead:
New Zealand's nuclear naysayers can rest easy this Christmas in the knowledge the nuclear power issue is off the agenda for next year.

Some of the country's top scientists at the Royal Society of New Zealand have been considering whether the society should promote a public debate on nuclear-generated electricity.

But the society's council has opted instead to endorse a discussion on clean-burning coals.

Chief executive Dr Steve Thompson said the change of mind was not a result of any political pressure.

"We thought another topic might grab the public more. They wanted to do something that was more immediately applicable to New Zealand. Nuclear power, if we did it, would still be a long way off," he said.
Technorati tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hate to be a party pooper guys, but there are pretty valid reasons why New Zealand won't be using nuclear energy for a while.

New Zealand's total electricity needs amount to an average output of roughly 4500 megawatts, and they already get roughly two-thirds of their energy from renewables (hydro and geothermal), and much of the rest from natural gas. Coal makes up only about 3% of their electricity consumption.

Under those circumstances it's hard to see how large scale reactors could be competitive, even ignoring political factors.
December 20, 2006 at 9:08 AM
Randal Leavitt said…
As the planet bakes dryer and dryer each year it will be interesting to watch different countries cling to their desperate hydro-electric systems. I wonder who will stubbornly hang on the longest?
December 20, 2006 at 10:16 PM
Rod Adams said…
Robert:

I understand your point about the small size of New Zealand's grid, but that does not mean that they should avoid talk of nuclear power. The technology for smaller scale plants is well understood and there are a number of vendors with interesting projects underway or near deployability.

Of course, my favorite design is the Adams Engine (TM), but there are also the barge mounted designs based on Russian ice breaker engines, the CAREM plant being designed in Argentina, the Chinese HTR's, the South African PBMR, and the Toshiba 4S.

Some or all of those might be able to give natural gas some competition.
December 21, 2006 at 9:21 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more