>> 4) Any benefits from Nuclear power at this stage

for NZ

>> would be far far far
>> outweighed by the potential dangers to the country's economy from 
>> any sort of
>> nuclear accident.
...

>> I'm no Luddite (despite what it may appear from some of my stances) 
>> but am
>> sure enough that Nuclear power makes very little sense for us in 
>> the
>> foreseeable future. Just dam another river and ... :-).

> How about if one of your volcanoes starts to leak a little ? Like 
> Mt.
> St.Helens ? Not that they don't already, but I mean in the context 
> of a
> feared nuke accident ?
>
> http://www.natureandco.co.nz/land_and_wildlife/landforms/volcanics/active.php3

Absolutely no comparison.
None at all.
Another good volcano would kill from a few dozen to maybe a few tens 
of thousands of people, maybe even 100,000 and we'd get on with life 
(if we weren't one of aforesaid victims). A decent (or an indecent) 
nuclear accident would trash certain aspects of our economy for, 
essentially, ever.

My city is built on 50+ volcanoes. The next one is overdue and should 
be bigger than all the prior ones combined.

Our Mt Taupo (so big that nobody can see it so they don't call it Mt 
Taupo)(they call it the volcanic plateau if they call it anything) is 
*THE* biggest volcano on earth over the last 20,000 years or so. And 
it's still quietly alive. Enough so that there are hot springs at 
north and south extents of the crater lake. And the crater lake is 
about 30 miles long and 20 miles wide :-). And its babies just south 
of it erupt happily into life every decade or two.

Mt St Helens  is a mere pimple. Krakatoa a wannabe Johny come lately. 
Aetna and Pompeii and all the rest don't feature compared. We run a 
fair bit of our tourist trade on top of the mountain's 'slopes' (which 
nobody can see).

And if it went bang again, it would be nothing compared to what a 
nuclear incident would do to us.



        Russell McMahon




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