When I first came here DeviantART was a fairly new thing, full of wonderful creative people.

My life was divided up into trying to score, living on the internet (primarily here) and saving up for things I really didn't need.

I enjoyed brief popularity with several pictures gaining Daily Deviations, I Meet great people, like Dan, Macey and Sasha.

Eventually somehow, I got sick of what the community here had become and decided (like many of my friends before me) that I would leave, focus more on actually creating then using the site.

For some reason I missed the place.

Then I decided to give the community another chance, I even purchased a lengthy subscription... but for some reason this place just hasn't sat right since I've come back.

I no longer feel the need to use dA, and shall not be posting any more of my work here, opting to use flickR for photography, and my own blog's gallery or my own work.

Further more I'll slowly be taking the bulk of my work down from the site over the next few months coming up to February 2009 (the end of my subscription) you'll be able to find it all on my blog site at some point.

Goodbye ^{and i really mean it this time!}

Peace, Love and all of that

Hey everybody, just messaging to tell you all that I'm going to be a father.

I thought id be scared but I actually can't wait.

peace love and all of that
-Tama

(P.S, going to my parents today, expect a huuuuuge art dump, I know I know, I've been slack)

Dear Editor,
Regarding Nuclear Energy: No. To the people who are jumping on the nuclear equals green bandwagon, while it is indeed less pollutive than say, Huntly, it’s a simple matter of economics, future technologies and alternative mentalities.

New Zealand has 4.26 million people in an area of approx 268,680 km sq. It is an isolated island nation, astride the Pacific “ring of fire.” The closest comparative country, also on the ring of fire, is Japan. Japan has a population of over 127 million in an area of approx 377,873 km sq. The other island nation to compare to, the United Kingdom, has nearly 61 million people within approx 244,820 km sq.

Japan and the UK can justify nuclear energy via supply and demand: In terms of density, Japan has 339 people per sq km, the UK has 246. We have around 15 per sq km. Nuclear energy, while great on paper, is simply uneconomical for NZ at this point in time. There is basically no realistic return on investment, and should a plant proposal get through the red tape of resource consents etc, no-one in their right mind would fund such a venture.

And as for those blithering on about “what about another Chernobyl?!”, look, Chernobyl was a rushed plant based on a flawed design over 20 years ago. It was Soviet corner-cutting at its worst, and even though it was built in the Generation II era, it was by design no better than a Generation I reactor. We’re up to Generation IV designs now, including designs that will do nothing at all when void of coolant. You’re simply more likely to be hit by bird droppings while in the middle of an air traffic accident during a solar eclipse than you are to experience another Chernobyl in your lifetime.

The main concern with Nuclear is the insistence that it has to be Uranium based. Uranium has limited reserves, of which only 0.7% of (natural) reserves can be used. However it remains popular because of the existing technologies/infrastructure and that it generates the most weapons grade material. Basically, any investment in Uranium based technology is a wasted investment, because like oil it is a dead-end resource.

Thorium, on the other hand, is much safer and has reserves to last us several hundreds, if not thousands of years. It is more efficient, can burn conventional nuclear waste, generates less waste, the waste it does generate has a half-life measured in dozens of years instead of hundreds/thousands, and it produces considerably less weapons grade material. Thorium is the answer to that (George Dubya voice) “Iran + Nukular = Terrism” non-issue that we in the West are being ignorantly force-fed. And to top it off Australia has the largest Thorium reserves in the world, followed by India, making it the most suitable Nuclear technology for NZ should it ever become economically and politically desirable for us.

But it’s all for nothing, really. The latest estimates from MIT is that if current funding continues, we’ll have commercial-grade fusion reactors within 30 years. Fusion is infinately safer and less wasteful, and any radioactive leftover from the process has a significantly lower half-life than present fission technologies.

The only real way forward in the meantime, though, is to do away with the silly notion that all electricity absolutely must be generated centrally. If we all had some combination of insulated homes, energy-efficient appliances, hybrid solar lighting, solar hot water panels, and small 1-2kWh cowl-style wind turbines, our dependance on our aging and inefficient national grid would collectively decrease.

Imagine; no more moaning in the middle of winter about lake levels, if only we’d all do our part, starting with the government retrofitting all state buildings and offering subsidies to people on their “Welcome Home” first home loan package.

The business model of the electricty industry would change - you’d basically augment your at-home-generated energy with units from a conventional provider. It would be possible under the right conditions for even a city council to generate and supply electricity, maybe finally giving us the competition that we were promised all those years ago when the industry was shaken up. Decentralisation is the key.

We have the technology now, we just lack the mentality and political motivation. And without either we’re not going to innovate, we’re not going to apply our #8 Wire ingenuity, we’re not going to go anywhere. We’ll stay stuck here in our anti-progressive public bickering session.

The fact remains though: For every wind turbine you protest, a little Huntly keeps polluting.

Rawiri Blundell
Petone