Category: Featured

Now We are Electrified, What Next?

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A bit to do before we start the City Rail Link

 

 

Before I get into the post here is a Tweet worthy of Tweet of the Week:

That was yesterday when the Minister of Transport Gerry Brownlee decided to dedicate his speech to the Government funding alternative transport options – the motorway (or motorways). Most likely you would have heard a pin drop and the tumble weed blow by before everyone decided to take one step back away from the stage after Brownlee’s rather archaic, insulting and patronising comments.

 

Anyhow today marked the start of the electric trains in revenue service with the 5:46am Onehunga to Britomart service being the first. As I have noted before the Manukau Line get the EMU’s in September while the Southern and Western Lines are next year. Pukekohe have to wait until Auckland Council sign the $110m cheque to get the wires from Papakura to Pukekohe (as well as two stations at Paerata and Drury).

Of course there were a few delays and niggles this morning as the EMU’s bed themselves into full revenue service. For the most part I would consider doing the Onehunga Line first and getting the glitches ironed out more “beneficial” than going all out on the Southern Line first. Then again the EMU’s will get a full work out when they do hit the Southern Line next year with passenger loadings (South has the third to fifth busiest stations on the network behind Britomart and Newmarket) as well as contending with those freight trains.

 

Now that we are electrified the question is what next with our rail network PRIOR to the City Rail Link being built. As Luke Christensen got a quick win with the Fanshawe Street bus lanes (which started operating today) we should and can get some quick and medium term wins to further boost the attractiveness of rail before the CRL comes online (whenever that may be).

A quick win is getting your feeder buses to and from the stations, some cycle lanes and lockers (at the stations), as well as some Park and Ride upgrades for the outlying stations all into position would be one booster. Auckland Transport are already getting the buses sorted in South Auckland with the new bus network in operation next year. The rest of Auckland get’s their bus network upgrades over the next couple of years. I am also aware Auckland Transport is upgrading and/or expanding some Park and Rides which will give further boosts towards rail patronage. And after the trial is complete more cycle lockers like those seen at Papakura and Papatoetoe will be rolled out.

So in answering Orakei Local Board Chair Desley Simpson’s question:

Desley Simpson
14 hours ago
I suppose electric trains are good for Auckland But if I was a councillor think I would have pushed for more people to access rail first – no good having flash trains if getting to a station is too hard
A lot of my ward have great difficulty accessing rail ……

 

What I just said about the first quick win will answer the question about improving access to the rail network for the Orakei Ward. For more on the new bus network please go here: https://at.govt.nz/projects-roadworks/new-public-transport-network/

 

Your next win is a medium term one but it can be done if we have the resolve. That win being getting the wires (and the two new stations at Drury and Paerata) from Papakura (where they currently terminate) to Pukekohe in time for the Southern Line EMU (electric train) roll out mid next year. With the urban growth happening down that way as well as Pukekohe getting the short end of the stick at the moment, getting the wires down to Pukekohe would be a way to secure and grow your patronage for rail. Also for once we would be ahead with infrastructure investment with two new stations and the brand new EMU’s all ready to go as the first new residents move in what is known as the Wesley, and Pukekohe Special Housing Areas. Having the wires extended to Pukekohe means we can also fully retire the diesel fleet rather than running the mix fleet model.

 

Back to a quick win to get a patronage boost for the South (as well as the South being happy as we can be an assertive lot) is for Auckland Transport to stop procrastinating and get the Manukau South Rail Link built over the next Summer Christmas break, ready for full operations by the time MIT starts Semester One the following February. Okay sure that link would allow Pukekohe to Manukau direct shuttles (thus only serving that particular area for Auckland) but the link and subsequent service would increase your patronage while giving South Auckland better access to their City Centre. 16 minutes from Papakura to Manukau via the South Link by train compared to around 30 minutes by bus (using the Great South Road) I believe we are on a winner here. Of course when the link is built can the frequencies be set to 20 minutes each way from 6am to 10pm seven days a week please (half hour outside those times).

 

For the Southern Line (although this is a long-term one) having the third main from Westfield Junction to Pukekohe would be great to see completed by 2020. With the ever-increasing amount of freight trains using the track plus the increasing amount of passenger trains using the same piece of track as the freighters, it will be inevitable (actually it already happens) getting cascading delays as both modes compete for the tracks (bit like cars and trucks competing for motorway access). So to mitigate against delays for both passenger trains and the freighters we will need the third main sooner rather than later. Especially as the South grows in population and industrial capacity.

 

So we are all go with the electric trains on the Onehunga Line this morning despite some expected snags (put it this way at least Otahuhu Power Station didn’t fail 😉 – wait there was a power failure – just not on the rail line: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11245446 ). As the electric train roll out continues across the rest of the network it is time to get those quick and medium wins in there too. If AT can move fast with Fanshawe Street’s bus lanes then we should be able to move quickly with some rail quick wins too 🙂

 

China and India Developing Thorium Power Generation

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The Nuke  – Part of the Future Tool Kit

 

Last year I wrote a post on what is known as Generation IV nuclear power generation and the potential benefits it could deliver to an ever energy-hungry world. You can see the post here: Generation IV Nuclear Power

Earlier this month The Economist released its own article on Thorium based nuclear power with it reporting on India and China making the biggest strides as they both try to meet their ever-growing energy demands (without having to revert to coal or gas-fired generation).

From The Economist:

Thorium reactors

Asgard’s fire

Thorium, an element named after the Norse god of thunder, may soon contribute to the world’s electricity supply

Apr 12th 2014 | From the print edition

WELL begun; half done. That proverb—or, rather, its obverse—encapsulates the problems which have dogged civil nuclear power since its inception. Atomic energy is seen by many, and with reason, as the misbegotten stepchild of the world’s atom-bomb programmes: ill begun and badly done. But a clean slate is a wonderful thing. And that might soon be provided by two of the world’s rising industrial powers, India and China, whose demand for energy is leading them to look at the idea of building reactors that run on thorium.

Existing reactors use uranium or plutonium—the stuff of bombs. Uranium reactors need the same fuel-enrichment technology that bomb-makers employ, and can thus give cover for clandestine weapons programmes. Plutonium is made from unenriched uranium in reactors whose purpose can easily be switched to bomb-making. Thorium, though, is hard to turn into a bomb; not impossible, but sufficiently uninviting a prospect that America axed thorium research in the 1970s. It is also three or four times as abundant as uranium. In a world where nuclear energy was a primary goal of research, rather than a military spin-off, it would certainly look worthy of investigation. And it is, indeed, being investigated.

India has abundant thorium reserves, and the country’s nuclear-power programme, which is intended, eventually, to supply a quarter of the country’s electricity (up from 3% at the moment), plans to use these for fuel. This will take time. The Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research already runs a small research reactor in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai plans to follow this up with a thorium-powered heavy-water reactor that will, it hopes, be ready early next decade.

China’s thorium programme looks bigger. The Chinese Academy of Sciences claims the country now has “the world’s largest national effort on thorium”, employing a team of 430 scientists and engineers, a number planned to rise to 750 by 2015. This team, moreover, is headed by Jiang Mianheng, an engineering graduate of Drexel University in the United States who is the son of China’s former leader, Jiang Zemin (himself an engineer). Some may question whether Mr Jiang got his job strictly on merit. His appointment, though, does suggest the project has political clout. The team plan to fire up a prototype thorium reactor in 2015. Like India’s, this will use solid fuel. But by 2017 the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics expects to have one that uses a trickier but better fuel, molten thorium fluoride.

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Molten Thorium Fluoride otherwise known as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor – a form of the Molten Salt Reactor design. More on the LFTR type of reactor can be found HERE with a basic design of such a reactor below:

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Molten_Salt_Reactor.svg/1000px-Molten_Salt_Reactor.svg.png

 

The rest of The Economist article carries on listing the benefits and challenges of Thorium based power. I noted in the Wikipedia article that Thorium based nuclear energy could even be used for what is known as nuclear desalination (using nuclear energy to turn sea-water into fresh water). Nuclear desalination already happens on a limited scale and you can read about it HERE. In a sense of irony the late Gerry Anderson’s ‘Thunderbirds’ had an episode (one of my favourites) called the Mighty Atom where in 2065 the Australians and later north Africans used nuclear energy to turn sea water into fresh water for use of irrigation in the Earth’s deserts (most likely to address the growing food shortage in that era). However, the arch-villain The Hood had accidentally set off a chain of events that destroyed the Australian atomic irrigation station (nearly poisoning Melbourne on the way), while a year later committed a deliberate act of sabotage to the Saharan atomic irrigation station to attract out International Rescue who would go on saving the station.

 

Cult classics aside, nuclear energy was once touted as a large-scale replacement to fossil fuel power generation for large industrialised or industrialising accidents. However, convention nuclear power (that uses uranium and plutonium) has suffered a series of critical set backs (three major meltdowns) that will never allow it to be as widespread as once promised in the 1960’s. But we can also not continue to increase our waste gas emissions from increasing fossil fuel use as the world economy (well) splutters forward. Solar and wind are good for micro and localised uses while hydro meets resistance owing to dams changing the ecology of the river being dam-ed (or damned). Thorium-based power could give an answer to our large industrial and industrialising countries that is clean and goes some distance in weaning that country off fossil fuel based power generation. India and China see the potential so it is hoped that other nations including the Americans (who bottled the technology effectively in the 60’s when they realised Thorium reactors could not produce nuclear weapon fuel for their Cold War “efforts”). And as fresh water becomes more scarce, nuclear desalination could provide assistance in turning sea-water into potable water for both drinking and irrigation.

 

And for those Thunderbird fans out there here is Part One of The Mighty Atom (and yes it has that line: “The REACTOR is under the complete control of the project staff – nothing CAN GO WRONG……):

 

So Who Really Wrote This?

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The Herald or Watercare themselves?

 

A week ago I critiqued Watercare (who provide our fresh and waster water services in Auckland) on their decision around a recycled storm-water scheme in Stonefields. You can read it here: Patch Protecting or Genuine Concerns?

This morning I noticed (and a few others) the editorial for the Herald this morning commenting again on the recycled storm-water scheme. Lets take a look bit by bit from the editorial this morning shall we?

From the NZ Herald

Editorial: Ditching dual water plan makes sense

4:15 AM Thursday Apr 10, 2014

Stonefields idea would be money down the drain.

Stonefields, a village-style residential development in what was the Mt Wellington quarry, has branded itself with environmental “sustainability”. The basis of that brand was a dual water supply. Every house built so far has both a drinking-water supply and a “third pipe”, bringing surface water from a central reservoir to toilets and outside taps. The system may have saved water from the metropolitan supplier, Watercare Services, but saving water is not the supplier’s prime concern.

Many, in fact, will suspect the monopoly supplier’s refusal to operate Stonefields’ scheme as intended is motivated by the simple desire to maximise its revenue. Not so, says Watercare. The scheme, it says, would have cost Stonefields residents more than they will pay for the normal water supply. And since the groundwater collected for the third pipe would not have been treated to the same standard, it would have been charging those residents more for a supply of lower quality.

 

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“Many, in fact, will suspect the monopoly supplier’s refusal to operate Stonefields’ scheme as intended is motivated by the simple desire to maximise its revenue.” When you read the rest of the editorial I wonder but not help that is “bending the truth” to a wide degree.

What would be nice if the editorial posted some hard figures on the actual cost Watercare is purporting for the third pipe recycled storm-water scheme. Costs that include both the set and operations of such a facility in comparison to the normal set up we already get. Then for good measure some comparative costs from overseas as well as the private sector to see if the scheme is not value for money as Watercare (and the Herald) claim

I also note saving water is not Watercare’s main concern. Well no if it is out to maximise income and profits which is telling as we further get down the editorial.

 

Cost is not the only consideration. Enthusiasts for third-pipe water conservation ought to consider what would be lost. This is a country in which the water is safe to drink. To slake a thirst, we turn on the nearest tap without a qualm. That would change if not all piped water could be trusted. The outside taps at Stonefields were to carry a sign that the water was not safe to drink. Do we really want that?

The former Auckland City Council ought to have thought of all these practicalities before it invoked principles of sustainability and made third-pipe reticulation a feature of Stonefields’ development consent. Its own water retailer, Metrowater, was going to run the system. But for the Super City’s creation, and the bulk supplier’s takeover of the whole system, the true costs of “sustainability” might never have been known.

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I assume whoever wrote this has never been around much as plenty of outside taps (not drinking fountains) even in urban Auckland carry the Do Not Drink sign above the said tap. And can someone tell me – who races to the garden hose and drinks out of it – regularly? So a really weak excuse here in that section of the editorial.

 

Thanks to the Waikato River, Auckland will never be short of water. There is no point conserving the water for its own sake if it must be replaced by a costly supply of inferior standard, no matter how interesting or exciting the environmental engineering involved.

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I am quite sure the people of the Waikato – especially those who use or treasure the river will be quite comforted that Auckland will never be short of water thanks to Watercare drawing water from there and then pumping it to Auckland after it treated –  NOT. I am aware Watercare are seeking consent to double the amount of water intake from the Waikato River to pump into a growing Auckland. This consent process has riled the people of the Waikato as the extra intake will no doubt put strain on New Zealand’s longest river. It is of note the lower Waikato is reliant on rainfall, Lake Taupo and the Waipa River for its water flow – and it is certainly not unlimited either. Just look what happens when our South Island hydro stations get dry years and the knock on effects downstream…

Now if you want a contradiction then check this last bit from the editorial

More water falls on Auckland than the city can use. Only a fraction of Stonefields’ storm water was to be channelled into the third pipe. Most would have drained to the Tamaki inlet. Reducing stormwater pollution of the sea around Auckland is the real challenge. Collecting tanks and treatment may be the answer, and if the water can be put to a cost-effective use, all the better. But recycling for a needless purpose at greater cost is not sustainable.

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Okay so more water falls on Auckland than we can use yet we get 10% of our total supply from the Waikato with Watercare wanting to increase that to 18% of total supply. Auckland also in 1994 suffered a drought which eventually led to the Waikato pipeline being built in the first place so that Auckland would not be faced with a similar situation again. So which way is it? We get enough rain that we do not need the Waikato, or is Auckland that large that we need the Waikato to supplement our dams.

 

In any case the real question that begs to be asked is ‘who actually wrote the editorial?’ Watercare or the NZ Herald themselves…