Say no to small modular reactors: Stop normalizing the exploitation of nature

The Bulletin, By Erin Hurley | April 1, 2024 Erin Hurley is a fourth-year student at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she studies Environment & Society and Journalism. She was a research assistant last year on the Plutonium Project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), for which she explored news media discourses on proposed small modular reactors in New Brunswick. This year, she is a research assistant on the SSHRC-funded CEDAR (Contesting Energy Discourses through Action Research) Project, for which she is focusing on news media coverage of energy transitions in the province.

Among other global crises, the worsening impacts of climate change are intensifying every year. Last year was the warmest on record and, beginning in March 2023, raging wildfires filled cities across Canada with smoke for months. This year is already shaping up to be warmer than the last. This is why a lot of young people are questioning the very systems we live under. This is why many of us support a rapid and just transition in energy. But in this process, some governments are promoting an expansion of nuclear power, supposedly to solve climate change. I fear that such an expansion will result in my generation having to confront an equally terrifying set of problems resulting from the nuclear fuel chain.

This is precisely what I already see happening around me in the Canadian province of New Brunswick where I live and study. Over the last few years, the province’s government has advocated for and funded the development of what it calls small modular reactors (SMRs). Even though SMR doesn’t include the word “nuclear,” these are nuclear reactors. Ostensibly, these reactors are meant to decarbonize the Canadian economy. But in 2021, New Brunswick Energy Minister Mike Holland protested the 2030 target for phasing out coal in the province, saying new nuclear reactors would not be ready in time to meet that goal. How will the expansion of nuclear power decarbonize the economy if, meanwhile, New Brunswick is still extracting and burning fossil fuels?

The province has funded two companies—Moltex Energy and ARC Clean Technology—to develop small modular reactors. On their websites, Moltex and ARC market nuclear power as “clean,” “carbon free,” and a “clean energy solution.”

Last year, Moltex CEO Rory O’Sullivan spoke to me, my fellow students, and professors working on the Plutonium Project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in which we explored these small modular reactors being proposed for the province to develop an understanding of the assumptions, claims, and implications of these technologies. I remember O’Sullivan as friendly and well-spoken. He emphasized that a transition away from fossil fuels is necessary and that renewable energy is a key element in this transition. Yet he told us that wind farms, for example, could not generate enough energy to sustain our society, and that battery storage was not advanced enough to help with this, and thus renewables could not be considered an effective climate solution on their own. This is why he advocates for small modular reactors—as a necessary supplement to renewables in the energy transition. But, again, he stressed that, at Moltex, they were working to reduce any potential safety risks.

This made me wonder: What about the highly radioactive waste these reactors will produce?

Even if SMRs produce less waste than past nuclear reactors (although not when weighted by how much electricity they produce), spent fuel will remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. While nuclear proponents have argued that a deep geological repository would be an effective storage space for the waste, there are many uncertainties surrounding this proposal, and the long-term impacts are unknown. The proposed sites for the repository are located on traditional Indigenous lands in the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace and Saugeen Ojibway Nation-South Bruce areas in Ontario. Because the safety of the proposed repository is unproven, storing radioactive waste there would jeopardize the health of the local Indigenous communities and their lands.

Moltex and ARC have advertised reprocessing as a way to recycle waste and use it to power other reactors. However, this is also incredibly dangerous, because once plutonium is separated from used nuclear fuel, it can be used much more easily in the production of atomic weapons. If separated plutonium were to fall into the wrong hands, the result would be nuclear proliferation—an increased number of nuclear weapons across the globe.

In addition to the waste and proliferation problems, small modular reactors will not be built and operating in time to be an effective climate solution. Canada’s climate targets involve decreasing greenhouse gas emissions to 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2050. However, ARC predicts that it will finish building its first small modular reactor by 2028 which will “replace the existing coal generation station in 2030” at Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in Saint John, New Brunswick. And Moltex does not expect to have an “operational reactor” until “the early 2030s.”

This timeline will clearly not help Canada reach its decarbonization goal by 2030, and so the country will not be on track for the 2050 goal either. Given these realities, I find it hard to believe that nuclear power is in the best interest of humans, non-human species, or the planet as a whole.

Capitalist nations that prioritize economic growth above all else, such as the United States and Canada, have normalized the exploitation of nature……………………………………………….. more https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/say-no-to-small-modular-reactors-stop-normalizing-the-exploitation-of-nature/#post-heading

April 3, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors