So on the NZ gay marriage thread, I mentioned Aotearoa being a strong independent black woman who don't need no man, and then telling the USA to go home.
It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of NZ's Nuclear free policy, and I was wondering what the world thinks of this.
In NZ, it's a huge majority against nuclear power/weapons/ships etc. since it's our culture.
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another island, Japan, has not had good luck going nuclear and they should of all countries know better. Back in the day it was a brave stand against the US meddling interests.
i guess its how successful can an infrastructure handle and manage it, so far no one has done extremely well
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Personally I think either way we can't win, fossils fuels are bad, renewables such as wind power and solar power don't provide enough energy to meet demands. So I am slightly in favour of nuclear power because the probability of accidents today is very remote. Of course it's up to a particular country to make an individual choice.
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I Think once again New Zealand is a world leader when it comes to looking after it's people. NZ had made a decision after listening to their people and not bowed to any outside influences. It certainly didn't sit on their hands waiting for the rest of the world o make their decisions. New Zealand did what was best for the country and what the majority of its people wanted.
Is New Zealand the only TRUE democracy left on earth?
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I have mixed feelings about nuclear energy.
I understand that a solid core reactor is always going to be problematic, they are difficult to control, take too long to respond to cooling and controls.
The LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactor) is a viable option that only China appears to be investing any time and money (actually lots of money) in developing.
The soil core reactors were picked over liquid core ones because of the ease to produce weapons grade fissionable materials. Mind our nuclear science started off big time in World War II where the singular goal was to build atomic weapons. Thus any research done in LFTR and other liquid core reactors was dropped in favor of solid core ones where the by product of weapons grade material was 'fastest' and 'easiest' to come by.
The horrors of Chernobyl and now Fukushima, are impossible with LFTR type reactors. Cooling and controls are done in vastly different ways without relying on pumps, water and other exterior resources. IF anything, you kill the power to a LFTR reactor it shuts down automatically and becomes 'safe' in an hour with no one doing anything.
Chernobyl would have been impossible with a LFTR reactor in that a test like the one done that sparked the disaster can't be done with a LFTR reactor.
Uranium is rare, so rare compared to thorium its kind of like burning bars of platinum instead of coal to heat your house. Yet we have nearly every commercial reactor in the world relying heavily on uranium and its by-products to operate.
There are liquid reactors in use on a few naval ships in the USA. While they are much smaller than a commercial operation, they have demonstrated their safety over and over again.
Thorium is also safe for a battery, that produces a lot of electricity and lasts for a very, very long time.
I can understand NZ's reluctance to jump onto the nuclear bandwagon, solid core reactors are dangerous, and should be phased out completely.
As for nuclear weapons, from Depleted Uranium (which is yet one more weapon produced by soil core nuclear reactors that can't be made with LFTR) to thermonuclear hydrogen bombs, these reflect humanity's small talent for war.
Considering that since the dawn of recorded history a battle a war has been waging somewhere on earth every single day of history, we have to wonder at the sanity of a species that can't seem to master the art of peace.
I say that human's have a small talent for war because we never do it right. War is supposed to be horrible, its supposed to be uncivilized, without rules, and so appalling that no one sees honor in it and will do anything at all to prevent a war from happening.
Instead humans have 'civilized' war, came up with all of these rules and made it into something with honor and dignity and justify these actions with nationalism, patriotism and vague notions of 'good vs evil'.
If we did war right, I assure you such things as atomic bombs, bioweapons, chemical weapons would not be made. The reason being is that we wouldn't be making many wars if they were so horrible that we did anything for peace.
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proponents of nuclear power, put it in YOUR back yard not mine.
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Nuclear Free New Zealand. Yes or No?
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, i bet the communitys in Japan around the nuclear reactor that had a meltdown recently wished it wasnt there - must be a huge area that is uninhabitable for generations to come too
