Dear Sir Robert

I like your column in today’s DomPost.  You are of course insightful beyond all imagining.

But I wish I’d been able to nominate beforehand which one of my passions you’d praise, because I do not quite deserve it in relation to nuclear power.

I do speak plainly. I did answer a question in a Wellington flat by suggesting the first nuclear station would go in Auckland, but it was intended to raise the laugh which followed, at Auckland’s expense.

I share the view of  eminent overseas green thinkers, that most countries will have no choice but nuclear power if the world is to have any hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But I know enough about the electricity industry to be aware that it will be a very long time, if ever, before nuclear power is economic here.

If any country can rely on sun, rain, wind and tide it will be New Zealand. So I have no difficulty in affirming [Gerry Brownlee’s dismissal of nuclear power stations]. They are not likely for New Zealand in the foreseeable future.