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Nuclear energy policies of NZ political parties

17 September 2014 - 3:25pm — Bevan

Most kiwis are, unfortunately, too proud of New Zealand's traditional anti-nuclear political stance to keep an open mind on the topic. Media and politics promote the idea that the rest of the world is "impressed" by our political stance. (My impression is that the rest of the world actually thinks our policy is stupid.)

Kiwis are so proud of our nuclear stance, that it would probably be political suicide for a politician or political party to say "lets build nuclear power stations" or even just "lets revisit bans on nuclear ships".

None of the three highest polling parties have published a policy on nuclear energy. None of their energy policies even mention "nuclear".

(All policies focus on renewable energy. National and Labour both have policies for 90% renewable energy by 2025. Greens' policy is 100% by 2030.)

Whether the lack of "nuclear" is because they are afraid of loss of support if they announced anything concieved as pro-nuclear, because they truly believe a ban on nuclear energy is best, or they simply failed to form or document a policy on it, is up for conjecture.

But the fact that nuclear is not even mentioned in any of those policy documents suggests to me that it is probably the fear of backlash. Although I have heard from multiple sources that New Zealand's energy consumption is too low to justify the cost of nuclear energy.

Of course, nuclear policies are of minor significance in the face of climate change as a whole.