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It was probably inevitable.

It really has been too long (^_^)/
Miss ya buddy! Still got my sword?

Unbelieveable!

That's fairly vague.

Kia Ora! I'm snowman1989... ah, what the hell, my name's actually Jeffrey. I'm from New Zealand (and if anybody says that's in Australia I'll have their guts for garders), and I'm studying at uni for an Arts degree. Which naturally means I'm dirt poor with no hope of any future career opportunities unless I immigrate to Australia.

My turn ons are history, shoot-em-up games, literature, movies, M&Ms with L&P, and web surfing.

My turn offs are racists, nuclear technology, exams, brussel sprouts, American idiots and Australians.

Depending on your definition of "American idiots" you may be in for a rough ride here. And Australians, for that matter.

(Just kidding...I hope!)

"Nuclear technology"? Not "nuclear weapons"? What's wrong with non-weapon nuclear technology?

What's wrong with it? Well my moral repugnance aside, it produces toxic radioactive waste that is as of this date unrecycleable by any means other than letting it sit in a 20m deep hole encased in concrete for the next 15,000 years. If anything were to go awry with a nuclear reactor the outcome... well, I'll let you mull things over with Chernobyl. Nuclear weaponry I believe deserves no further comment here. Nations that wield nuclear tech tend to become jackasses with it (if they weren't phenomenal jackasses already) and blow up mushroom clouds in our backyard, becoming overly domineering and self-centred. Yes, I'm talking about America. Also Russia. And France.

Especially France. France is a monstrosity. Me and my countrymen can never forgive them for what they did. I personally hope there's a special place in Hell (if such a place exists) for the perpetrators of the Rainbow Warrior Bombing.

That answer your question Phiend?

I was just looking at Chernobyl...oddly, the somewhat similar incident at Three Mile Island in the US (which happened nine years before Chernobyl) caused no deaths or injuries. Then again, the problem nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island had a containment vessel to keep radioactive gases inside (Chernobyl did not). And they were different types of nuclear reactors; near as I can tell, the rather dangerous design of Chernobyl's RBMK was a side effect of its ability to operate with natural uranium and natural water, rather than needing enriched uranium like the pressurized water reactors at Three Mile Island.

(More conceptually fascinating topics found during impromptu research include evidence of nuclear fission occurring under natural conditions and the ability of "fast neutron reactors" to consume radioactive waste as fuel)

Anyway, main reason I bring it up is because I find nuclear power preferable to power derived by burning fossil fuels. Burning coal, natural gas and the like produces a significantly larger volume of waste in the form of smoke, a volume much more difficult to contain than nuclear byproducts. Nothing wrong with hydroelectricity in lieu of either of those, but that requires suitable sites; I have to guess that's why Oregon has a few fossil fuel plants despite having a legion of hydroelectric stations, including a couple of the largest in the country (those are shared with Washington, since the Columbia River is the state border between us).

I'm afraid that over here we don't find nuclear energy preferable. We've had too many bad memories concerning nuclear technology to ever seriously consider adopting it, in fact, it's political suicide to even suggest it because our anti-nuclear legislation is considered sacrosanct. Most of New Zealand's energy comes from hydroelectric dams, but there are some geothermal plants and wind farms are beginning to spread out particularly around the southern North Island, which is notoriously windy. We've mostly done away with coal plants.

I guess if we were a little bigger or we have a nation-wide drought then we might have a problem.

missed you a lot buddy
nice to see you back