John MacDonald: Should NZ build a nuclear reactor to attract tech giants?

How would you feel about New Zealand building small nuclear reactors to generate more power? That’s what the Maxim Institute think-tank is calling for. Saying that, if we did, more of the world’s biggest technology companies could be attracted here to establish big data centres and that would add billions of dollars to the economy. Thomas Scrimgeour from the Maxim Institute says the rest of the world is going nuclear on the power generation front and we need to catch up. He also thinks New Zealanders could be convinced that small nuclear power generators are a good thing. Saying that, in the 1970s, it was assumed that New Zealand would one-day use nuclear energy to generate power. But that changed in the 1980s because of nuclear testing in the Pacific. I’m not as confident as him. I’m open to finding out more about nuclear power generation. But I think if you did something like a referendum on it, most people would be against it. I may be wrong. But that’s my hunch. Because our nuclear-free policy has muddied the waters bug time. Our policy doesn’t even let ships that are nuclear-powered into our waters. Let alone ships carrying nuclear weapons. And, because of that, a lot of people think if nuclear weapons are bad then anything and everything nuclear is bad. But my mind is more open than that. I’m not saying it would be easy to convince me that we should be using nuclear energy to generate power. I’d have just as many reservations as the next person. But why can’t we at least agree to look into it? You know what would happen, though. Even the exercise of investigating further would be hijacked by those who just cover-up their ears and don’t want to know. Or, more to the point, it would be hi-jakced by those who want to cover up not just their own ears - but everyone else’s ears, as well. But I’m up for us looking into it. The reason the Maxim Institute is pushing this thinking today is that it wants us to take advantage of all the big technology companies wanting to set-up big data centres. Especially for artificial intelligence. They’re saying there’s big money in that for New Zealand, potentially. Microsoft has committed $1 billion to local data centres. While Ammazon Web Services’ Auckland development is expected to contribute around $10.8 billion to the economy over the next 15 years. We need the power to run them and attract more data centres here. But they need truckloads of power and, as things are at the moment, we aren’t in a position to offer truckloads of power. Which is why the Maxim Institute is saying we need to go nuclear. My mind is open to it. But what about yours?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.