nuclear-news

White Elephant CANDU nuclear technology sold to scandal-plagued engineering firm SNC Lavalin.

Inside the race for Canada’s nuclear waste: 11 towns vie to host deep burial site Canada’s nuclear waste will be deadly for 400,000 years. What town would like the honour of hosting it?CHARLES WILKINS TheGlobe and Mail Feb. 26 2015,

…….So accustomed have we become to such power, we have largely stopped thinking about its uncomfortable truths: For example, that Canada’s signature nuclear technology, the CANDU reactor, seeded proliferation of atomic weapons in Pakistan and India.

Or that the supposedly world-beating CANDU turned out to be a financial white elephant: The CANDU’s creator, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., devoured billions in subsidies before the CANDU technology was finally sold for a pittance to scandal-plagued engineering firm SNC Lavalin.

Nuclear power is said to be cheap—but only if one doesn’t count costs that either have been offloaded or are yet to be fully funded, such as accident liability, waste management and the debts incurred in reactor construction. Moreover, the industry has a history of wild cost overruns: The bill for creating Ontario’s Darlington facility during the 1980s climbed from a projected $3.9 billion to more than $14 billion………http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/inside-the-race-for-canadas-nuclear-waste/article23178848/

February 27, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties