The trip to Japan was paid for by the Japanese government as part of a programme where they will bring 6000 young businesspeople each year from other countries for the next five years to learn about the Japanese economy, business scene and culture. Fifty from New Zealand were on this trip.
The near two week trip was a wonderful experience with perhaps two highlights for myself. The first was experiencing Japan’s nightlife and seeing the tiny alleys, the small eateries and 10-seat bars that seem to predominate in entertainment areas.
The second highlight was a tour around parts of the Toshiba Nuclear Engineering Research facility. It’s a safe bet that hardly any Kiwis have seen what we got to see.
There was no operational reactor there but we did see a functional seven storey high containment chamber filled with blue looking deuterium water. We also stood in a life sized reactor core and saw great models showing how the whole process works. It sure beat my last NZ facility tour – a chocolate factory.
If we wanted to, we could pick up a good new nuclear power plant for about billion with an expected life of about 50 years and standard output of 1 gigawatt. Seven would cover New Zealand’s current electricity requirements. Actually, if we wanted one we would need to buy two because each is out of service for a month each year as the containment chamber is examined for tiny cracks which then get repaired with small lasers.
Seriously though, there is no chance we will ever have nuclear energy in New Zealand given that one of the few ways we define ourselves as Kiwis – apart from that we are not Aussies – is that we are nuclear free.
Having said that, however, if there are huge quantities of oil in the Great Southern Basin does that increase or decrease the chances that we have nuclear things near our shores? One would suspect that if for the first time in our existence we become of some strategic relevance to the rest of the world whoever is buying our oil might want to protect it with the occasional inshore above or below water patrol.
Apparently, we would score about 40% of the oil if it is there, with whoever sucks it out for us taking the other 60% as reward for the job. If that happened and say the Crown started raking in a few extra billion a year, how would it affect our economy? For a start, one would expect the New Zealand dollar to jump 20-40 cents as we became a partial petro-currency. This would naturally decimate all other exporters.
The government would probably try to soften this blow by directing the revenue toward slashing the company tax rate. A level of 5% would seem a good target, though at that level it may not be worth collecting given the compliance costs.
Personal income tax rates would also get slashed but probably to a far smaller degree as consumers would benefit substantially from much cheaper foreign goods.
The population growth rate would probably soar, through much stronger net immigration, and we could anticipate a structural lift in infrastructure development.
Perhaps plenty of Aucklanders would relocate to Southland – though people in the field say that the oil ships would load up directly at sea rather than via a pipe along the seabed to land. So land-based activities would be present but not necessarily huge – unless the buyers of the oil decided to refine it here in our politically and almost geologically stable country. Now that would be interesting and entail huge expenditure.
Enough written; it’s time for another couple of movies and the PC battery has just about run out.
