Nuclear Energy and a Nuclear-Free New Zealand
Nuclear-free New Zealand deserves credit for doing without nuclear energy and nuclear weapons; it is important that we continue to oppose nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, and maintain the policy of a nuclear-free New Zealand, despite external pressure.
One of the solutions previously being touted by Tony Blair and John Howard – the team that brought us the Iraq war – is to go nuclear, both in terms of nuclear weapons and in the expansion of the nuclear generation of domestic electricity. Their argument is that nuclear power generation does not contribute to global warming, because it does not produce greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, this line of thought completely ignores the fact that there is already a massive backlog of unhandled nuclear waste on the planet, to which they would only be contributing more.
Fortress New Zealand takes the view that the nuclear option is the lazy way out of our current predicament. It is the solution which will become the problem. The long-term problems caused by nuclear waste threaten to turn the whole planet into a barren wasteland for millions of years. The adoption of additional nuclear facilities should be resisted at every turn, because it will also increase the risk of nuclear accidents – like Chernobyl – as well as encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is the fast road to mass extinction.