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Canada’s Federal Budget Funding for New Nuclear Reactors a ‘Climate Throwaway’ 

www.ccnr.org/media_11_April_2022.pdf       version en français: www.ccnr.org/communique_11_avril_2022.pdf

Toronto (April 11 2022) – The 2022 federal budget’s investment in unproven nuclear reactor designs, dubbed Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), is being called a “climate throwaway” by civil society groups. Just days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its starkest report yet urging aggressive climate action, the federal government is choosing to invest in yet-to-be proven technologies that miss the mark for halving emissions by 2030.

SMRs refer to a set of proposed nuclear technologies, designed to produce up to 300 megawatts of electricity. They are promoted for both the electric grid and for remote, off-grid communities to replace diesel reliance and to power resource extraction projects.

120+ civil society groups from coast to coast to coast including the Green Budget Coalition have asked the federal government to reallocate funds for SMRs into cost-effective, socially responsible, renewable energy solutions available now.

The budget dedicates $120 million over five years for SMRs:

●      Approximately $70 million of the budget is for research, geared to waste minimization.

This could include the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, a chemical process for extracting plutonium from used radioactive fuel waste. Reprocessing is not currently used in Canada and it raises many proliferation and security concerns. Plutonium is a dangerous material not found in nature.  Reprocessing is in no way a solution to reducing radioactive waste, it simply redistributes the highly radioactive fission products into different waste streams. With the fission products removed, the remaining materials are much more susceptible to being stolen or used in nuclear weapons.

●      Approximately $50 million to build capacity within Canada’s nuclear regulator to regulate SMRs.

Investment in regulatory processes will not remedy the fact that SMRs have been removed from the federal impact (environmental assessment) process. SMR projects are only required to undergo a narrow licensing process, conducted by Canada’s nuclear regulator. Their expertise and regulatory framework is not equivalent with impact assessment law, which requires an upfront examination of ecological, socio-economic and sustainability impacts spanning the duration of the project.

The budget also includes two other provisions potentially applicable to SMR projects:

●      A new tax credit of up to 30% for net zero technologies such as battery storage and clean hydrogen. Nuclear projects should be ineligible for this tax credit as they are not cost-competitive with renewables and as has been previously pointed out, nuclear-powered hydrogen is not renewable hydrogen. Any application for this tax credit must also be required to transparently demonstrate the project’s economic viability.

●      Continuing the $8 billion Net Zero Accelerator initiative for projects with the potential to substantially reduce emissions by 2030 and support the goal of net-zero by 2050. SMRs are in the earliest of planning phases and anticipated dates for operation are well into the 2030s. This, coupled with the nuclear sector’s trend of construction delays and cost overruns, should make SMR projects ineligible as they cannot contribute to meeting the most urgent of climate targets, which requires halving emissions by 2030.

April 12, 2022 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

Saskatchewn ponders new small nuclear reactors, but opposition unsure about safety and environmental impacts

‘Will be changed very shortly’: Premier confident nuclear energy generation will be coming to Sask.  Wayne Mantyka, CTV News Regina Video Journalist, 25 Mar 22, ”…………………………..  In 2019, Saskatchewan signed an agreement with Ontario and New Brunswick toward evaluation of new SMR technology. On Monday, SaskPower will announce the next steps in the decision making process and will also now assess reactors on the market and consider possible locations.

The opposition NDP would like to see more public discussions before any final decisions are made.“We’ve been clear about where we’re at on the opportunity and the challenges that SMRs may provide in Saskatchewan,” NDP MLA Aleana Young said. “Of course energy security is of massive concern to everyone in Saskatchewan as is the condition of our grid and the necessity for clean base load power, but there are going to be a huge number of people in the province who have questions and who have concerns.”

“We’re not like Ontario. We don’t have existing nuclear power facilities and this needs to be a real conversation with people in Saskatchewan, not just about the business case and dollars and cents but about the environment and all of the implications for our communities,” Young added.

SaskPower has not made a decision about generating nuclear energy. If the idea wins public support and proves feasible, a small modular reactor could be operating in the province as early as 2030……………….   https://regina.ctvnews.ca/will-be-changed-very-shortly-premier-confident-nuclear-energy-generation-will-be-coming-to-sask-1.5833828

March 26, 2022 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

Ottawa’s Nuclear Funding Delays Climate Action, Ignores Indigenous Objections, Opponents Warn

Ottawa’s Nuclear Funding Delays Climate Action, Ignores Indigenous Objections, Opponents Warn The Energy Mix March 20, 2022

The federal government is delaying climate action by subsidizing small, modular nuclear reactor (SMR) development, over the objections of the remote, Indigenous communities the technology is supposed to serve as an alternative to diesel generators, opponents warned last week.

“There is no guarantee SMRs will ever produce energy in a safe and reliable manner in Canada,” the groups said in a release, after Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced a C$27.2-million grant for Westinghouse Electric’s $57-million bid to move its e-Vinci reactor toward licencing. They said systems of the type Westinghouse is developing “are not the energy answer for remote communities”, since they “do not compete when compared with other alternatives.”

In a study conducted in 2020, “the cost of electricity from SMRs was found to be much higher than the cost of wind or solar, or even of the diesel supply currently used in the majority of these communities,” the release added.

“Canadians want affordable energy that does not pollute the environment,” said Susan O’Donnell, spokesperson for the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick. “Why would we invest in unproven technologies that, if they ever work, will cost two to five times more than building proven renewables?”

“The nuclear industry is promoting a nuclear fantasy to attract political support while purging past failures—like cost overruns and project delays—from public debate,” said Kerrie Blaise, northern services legal counsel at the Canadian Environmental Law Association. “Before Canada invests any public dollars in this yet-to-be-developed technology, they must fully evaluate the costs of nuclear spending and liabilities associated with the construction, oversight, and waste of this novel technology.”

“Studies have shown that electricity from small modular reactors will be more expensive than electricity from large nuclear power plants, which are themselves not competitive in today’s electricity markets,” said M. V. Ramana, a professor at the University of British Columbia School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, one of the co-authors of the 2020 study. “There is no viable market for small modular reactors, and even building factories to manufacture these reactors would not be a sound financial investment……………….

Last week’s government release added that SMR development will “help communities that rely on heavy-polluting diesel fuel to transition to a cleaner source of energy.” But the opposing groups say many of those remote settings are Indigenous communities, and SMR development isn’t the help they’re looking for. A December, 2018 resolution by the Assembly of First Nation Chiefs asked the industry to stop pursuing SMR development and the government to stop funding it, and “other Indigenous communities, including the Chiefs of Ontario, have passed resolutions opposing funding and deployment of SMRs”. https://www.theenergymix.com/2022/03/20/ottawas-nuclear-funding-delays-climate-action-ignores-indigenous-objections-opponents-warn%ef%bf%bc/

March 24, 2022 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Canada’s green bond program specifically prohibits investments in nuclear energy


Is nuclear energy green or not? Federal government sending conflicting messages, critics say

At the same time the government invests in small modular nuclear reactor projects, its new planned green bond program specifically prohibits investments in nuclear energy

Excerpt from the National Post, Mar 18, 2022  •The Liberal government is being accused of sending conflicting messages about the nuclear industry and how it can help adapt to a green environment.

The week the Liberal government put $27.2 million into a promising new small modular nuclear reactor — but at the same time its green bond program, meant to boost environmentally-friendly programs, specifically excludes investments in nuclear power.

The conflict shows mixed support at best for the industry, say critics………….

The green bond program was announced in last spring’s budget and detailed rules were released earlier this month. The green bonds would be part of Canada’s broader debt program, but the money would be specifically diverted to environmentally-friendly programs, such as climate change adaptation measures, other forms of renewable energy, and energy efficiency……….

Adrienne Vaupshas, a spokesperson for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, said Canada’s green bonds were following international standards.

“Canada’s green bond framework is fully aligned with international green bond standards and market expectations,” she said….

March 21, 2022 Posted by | Canada, climate change, politics | Leave a comment

Indigenous, scientific, environmental and citizen groups strongly oppose Ottawa’s push for small nuclear reactors

 Ottawa pours more money into next-gen nuclear tech; critics to push back
against ‘dangerous distraction’. Innovation, Science and Industry
Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced a $27.2-million investment
Thursday in the development of next-generation nuclear technology he said
will make energy more accessible to remote communities.

However, numerous Indigenous, scientific, environmental and citizen groups have called the
technology a “dirty, dangerous distraction” from real climate action.
The money will go to the development of Westinghouse Electric Canada
Inc.’s eVinci micro-reactor, a small modular reactor (SMR) the company
says will “bring carbon-free, transportable, safe and scalable energy
anywhere Canada requires reliable, clean energy.”

 National Observer 17th March 2022

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/03/17/news/ottawa-pours-more-money-next-gen-nuclear-tech-prompting-critics-push-back-against

March 21, 2022 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Small modular nuclear reactors – no good for Canada’s indigenous communities, no good for climate action

The Government of Canada is further delaying climate action with an
announcement of $27 million in funding today to develop a Small Modular
Nuclear Reactor (SMR).

There is no guarantee SMRs will ever produce energy
in a safe and reliable manner in Canada. During his remarks for the
announcement, François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science
and Economic Development Canada, as well as Westinghouse representatives,
said that the technology to be developed, the e-Vinci reactor by the
Westinghouse Electric Company, will be suitable for remote Indigenous
communities currently using diesel energy.

However, research has demonstrated that small modular nuclear reactors such as the type
Westinghouse is proposing are not the energy answer for remote communities.
The researchers–Froese, Kunz & Ramana (2020)–concluded that the
economics of SMRs do not compete when compared with other alternatives. The
cost of electricity from SMRs was found to be much higher than the cost of
wind or solar, or even of the diesel supply currently used in the majority
of these communities.

 Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility 17th March 2022

http://www.ccnr.org/

March 19, 2022 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Fossil and nuclear energy regimes threaten global security

Fossil and nuclear energy regimes threaten global security

Opinion: The deadly power of the troika of oil, gas and nuclear energy is unfolding before our eyes

New Brunswick Media Co-Op, by Janice Harvey, March 14, 2022

Vladimir Putin’s terror campaign against Ukraine has pulled back the curtain on the tightly integrated, brittle, and destructive energy regime that fuels the industrialized world. This regime poses an immediate threat to the survival of the people of Ukraine, and the longer-term survival of civilization itself. The deadly power of the troika of oil, gas and nuclear energy is unfolding before our eyes as Ukraine pays the price for a path all our countries have forged.

Energy is a source of two kinds of power – the kind that turns on lights, heats homes, and turns engines and the kind that drives politics. While there are many options for providing the energy services we all need, only some create authoritarian petrostates, transnational corporations with budgets larger than many nations, and billionaire oligarchs. Only some finance wars and inflict gross injustices on those in the paths of rigs and pipelines. Only some emit pollutants that kills millions every year.  Only some create deadly wastes that will persist longer into the future than humans have walked on this Earth. Only some turn a conventional missile into a nuclear weapon. Only some destroy the climate that makes Earth liveable.

All these existential threats are associated with the global networks of political and economic power built by transnational energy corporations. Energy policy has long been dominated by ‘iron triangles’ of energy business interests, ‘client’-oriented energy bureaucrats, and captured politicians. Whether it is Putin’s transnational petrodollars, Western Europe’s energy tap line to Russia, or nuclear plants dotting the European landscape, governments and whole countries have become entangled in a dangerous, brittle system that now threatens global security.

The inevitable outcome is the world on a knife-edge.

In the midst of Russia’s oil-financed terror campaign, the international climate science body issued its latest report documenting our collective descent into climate hell. UN Secretary-General Guterres called the report ‘an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.’

Enter the nuclear industry. After languishing for decades in Western countries due to intractable liabilities, and a legitimacy crisis following narrow escapes and full-blown disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, opportunistic nuclear interests have seized on the climate emergency to promote itself as the ‘clean’ energy solution. This falsehood has now been exposed in Ukraine. Every nuclear reactor and nuclear waste storage site is a potential nuclear weapon, minus the blast and fireball. All Putin has to do to wreak radioactive havoc across Europe is target a nuclear facility or two with conventional missiles. Uncontrolled nuclear reactions and wind currents will do the rest.

Yet, the Liberal government’s climate action plan includes pouring hundreds of millions into an industry that would build modular nukes to export around the world, each one a target for a despot or a terrorist. This is all laid out in the federal “SMR Action Plan” that the nuclear industry helped to write, with funding disguised within the $8 billion “Net Zero Accelerator”.

New Brunswick is vying to become the hub for producing this deadly commodity. Nuclear experts from the United States have exposed the security threat inherent in the plutonium feedstock – the stuff of nuclear weapons – that one of the New Brunswick models requires. But even without diverting that fuel into a nuclear weapons program, the plant only needs to exist to be a nuclear target.

The Ukraine catastrophe should be enough to halt nuclear expansion in its tracks. Trading one existential threat (fossil fuel dependency) for another (an even wider network of nuclear targets) is a callous, willful betrayal of the public trust by those politicians enabling it…………..

Political leaders in Canada and abroad have two choices before them. They can deepen domestic and global energy and security vulnerabilities and hasten climate breakdown by building more pipelines, escalating oil and gas production, and enabling the expansion of the nuclear industry. Or they can work towards the elimination of energy as a geopolitical weapon and an existential threat to the civilization. It is up to us citizens to hold them accountable for the choice they make.

March 15, 2022 Posted by | Canada, safety | Leave a comment

MPs and groups oppose hearings to license Canada’s first permanent radioactive waste dump.

MPs and groups oppose hearings to license Canada’s first permanent radioactive waste dump

MPs and groups oppose hearings to license Canada’s first permanent radioactive waste dump, https://concernedcitizens.net/2022/02/16/mps-and-groups-oppose-hearings-to-license-canadas-first-permanent-radioactive-waste-dump/  OTTAWA, February 16, 2022 – Members of Parliament and 50 environmental and citizen groups are opposed to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC)’s forthcoming hearings to license Canada’s first permanent “disposal” facility for radioactive waste.

A statement calling for suspension of the hearings is signed by three MPs: Laurel Collins, NDP environment critic; Elizabeth May, Parliamentary Leader of the Green Party of Canada; and Monique Pauzé, environment spokesperson for the Bloc Québécois. 

Union signatories of the statement include Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) – Québec, Fédération des travailleurs et des travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) and the Unifor Québec Health, Safety and Environment Committee Unifor.

Other signatories include Friends of the Earth, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive, National Council of Women of Canada, Ontario Clean Air Alliance, and Quebec’s Front commun pour la transition énergétique. Ottawa Valley groups include Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, Old Fort William Cottagers’ Association, Action Climat Outaouais, and Pontiac Environmental Protection, among others.

On January 31, the Kebaowek First Nation asked that the hearings be halted until a consultation framework between them and the CNSC is in place. The hearings are for authorization to build a “Near Surface Disposal Facility” for nuclear waste at Chalk River, Ontario, on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabeg lands alongside the Ottawa River.

The CNSC staff report recommends licensing the construction of the mound for 1 million cubic metres of radioactive and toxic wastes accumulated by the federal government since 1945. The CNSC has scheduled licensing hearings on February 22 and May 31. No separate environmental assessment hearing is scheduled.

The proposed facility would be an aboveground mound a kilometre from the Ottawa River, upstream from Ottawa and Montréal. 140 municipalities have opposed the project and fear contamination of drinking water and the watershed.

In 2017, the CNSC received 400 submissions responding to its environmental impact statement, the overwhelming majority of them opposed to the plan.

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

NB Power and New Brunswick government gamble on untested, non existent ”small” nuclear reactors (SMRs)

While the world is turning overwhelmingly toward renewable sources of
energy, currently about four times cheaper than new nuclear plants and with
an established track record, NB Power and the New Brunswick government
insist on gambling on two new unproven nuclear plants, misleadingly termed
“small modular nuclear reactors” (SMNRs or SMRs).

SMRs do not exist at all in Canada except on paper or as computerized plans. There is no
guarantee these new untested reactors will ever succeed in producing
electricity in Canada in a safe and affordable manner.

But public utilities across the country are being pressured to generate power without emitting
greenhouse gases during operation. Instead of investing big bucks in
negawatts (energy efficiency) or renewables, four provinces are promoting
new nuclear plants – SMRs – as their best strategy for combatting
climate change. Since these plants are not likely to materialize for more
than a decade, if ever, the nuclear strategy is another way of “kicking
the can down the road.”

 NB Media Co-op 27th Jan 2022

New nuclear plants (SMRs) in New Brunswick: Wild card or sure bet?

January 29, 2022 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Canada’s state broadcaster CBC peddles lies and slanders about jailed journalist Julian Assange

Canada’s state broadcaster CBC peddles lies and slanders about jailed journalist Julian Assange, WSW, J.D. Palmer, 24 January 2022 J.D. Palmer, a freelance journalist and fiction writer from Montreal. Palmer recently submitted a formal complaint to Canada’s state broadcaster, CBC, over its coverage of last month’s UK court ruling against the acclaimed journalist Julian Assange, 

Following the calamitous ruling on December 10, 2021 by a British court to extradite Julian Assange to face espionage charges in the US, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired two reports, densely packed with hideous deceptions that lend support to Washington’s efforts to persecute and silence the award-winning journalist.

I filed a complaint with the CBC Ombudsman on December 18, wondering how Canada’s public broadcaster could possibly justify its malevolent reportage.

Having laid bare the US empire as a never-ceasing conveyor belt of war crimes, Assange exposed Washington’s lies of “nation building” in Afghanistan and Iraq as a vast “money laundering” operation.

And yet, as his legal case progressed, it was clear that the Wikileaks founder’s heroism was resulting in his slow murder via multi-state judicial corruption. In response to this remarkable case, in one of many examples of journalistic malfeasance, Chris Brown, in his report for the CBC’s flagship news program “The National,” falsely asserts that Assange “leaked” the cables that contained the infamous Collateral Murder video. Brown, a long-time CBC correspondent, can presumably distinguish between publishing and leaking. Determined to confuse the viewer, Brown fails to mention the role of whistleblower Chelsea Manning (Assange’s source) and through conflation taints the journalistic credentials of the man who exposed torture at Guantanamo.

Brown knows quite well that publishing leaks is the backbone of national security journalism with the quotidian apparatus of “legacy” newspapers like the New York Times, providing potential whistleblowers with technical instructions on their websites for evading detection. That’s why, as CBC fails to inform the viewer, the Obama administration chose not to prosecute Assange (a decision later reversed by Trump’s Department of Justice or DOJ). Due to what it deemed the “ New York Times problem,” such a precedent, Obama’s DOJ concluded, could be used against fellow elites.

Now in the hands of Biden’s DOJ, this clear case of selective prosecution by the US and its colluding vassal state, the UK, has been denounced by legal experts, a swath of trade unions and activists. And while one can reliably count on Canada’s public broadcaster to ignore grassroots campaigns, what’s remarkable is that the CBC’s reporting on this historic case sinks below even the corporate media’s degraded standards.

Both CBC reports dodged press freedom groups, humanitarian organizations, politicians and the sorts of celebrity activists that would normally be made the unabashed focal point of any press coverage of a humanitarian cause. Brown’s segment, as well as Tessa Arcilla’s segment for the CBC morning news, made reference only to Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, and “supporters,” aiming to paint protestors as merely fringe and familial.

When I contacted Moris about my intention to file a complaint with the CBC’s Ombudsman, she wondered why CBC had not, at the very least, “… provided equal length to the defence arguments or arguments from press freedom groups and Amnesty [International]?”

By December 10, Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, was just one of many impartial legal and humanitarian experts seeking the attention of any media organization that would listen. Melzer, along with a medical team, had adjudicated Assange as a victim of torture, after finding him in a degraded and frail state in Belmarsh Prison, “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay.”

While other networks provided at least some time for humanitarian lawyers, such as Reporters Without Borders’ Rebecca Vincent, to refute the US’s case, no legitimate expert found their way onto the screens of CBC’s viewers. Instead, viewers were presented with camouflaged shills………………….

While CBC’s upper management vociferously decries “misinformation” in self-congratulatory, tone-deaf blogs, presenting itself as brave gate-keepers “battling the growing scourge of disinformation,” their history of covering the Assange case provides a window into just how depraved its journalistic culture has become.

Blighting what an international panel of jurists at the UN adjudicated as Assange’s “arbitrary detention” in the Ecuadorian embassy, CBC Radio, from 2018 to 2019, aired a series of smear pieces in the guise of lifestyle segments, comedy and news. Often aimed at the Wikileaks founder’s alleged hygiene failures, these dehumanizing broadcasts trotted out sketch comedians, UK diplomats and other Assange enemies (such as discredited filmmaker Alex Gibney, and co-fabricator of the debunked Manafort-Assange conspiracy theory, Dan Collyns) as neutral experts. In one sickening case, CBC (in a painfully long segment) offered up a “master butler” to smugly chasten Assange, “If that’s the type of service you want, you need to go to a hotel.”

None of CBC’s hacks seemed to care that they might be willing pawns in a disinformation campaign launched by vicious technocrats, something proven years later when senior members of the UK government were revealed to have conspired to violate Assange’s asylum rights…………..

Absent any whiff of a moral ballast, the CBC fails to grasp the irony of imprisoning a journalist for publishing evidence of war crimes and not the criminals who committed them. As the US led global shop of horrors comes nearer to its goal of criminalizing substantive journalism, the CBC and its gutless class of information dilettantes can rest safely knowing they pose no threat.   https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/25/cbca-j25.html?pk_campaign=assange-newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws

January 27, 2022 Posted by | Canada, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Chief Hugh Akagi will present the case against having a CANDU-6 nuclear reactor on Peskotomuhkati land

Canada’s nuclear regulator starts hearings on Lepreau,  h

Chief Hugh Akagi says he’ll listen today and speak his mind this spring

Rachel Cave · CBC News · Jan 26, 2022  Chief Hugh Akagi says his 15 minutes is coming in May.

That will be his time to tell Canada’s Nuclear Safety Commission that he objects to having a CANDU-6 reactor on traditional Peskotomuhkati land.

“If anything goes wrong,” said Akagi, his voice trailing away as he contemplated the possibility of a nuclear accident. “Nuclear is being touted as green energy and I just do not feel that there is any compatibility there at all.”

Akagi will be speaking for the Passamaquoddy Recognition Group.

The organization has been granted $45,000 in federal funding to research and prepare a presentation that will take place this spring.

That’s part two of the licensing hearings that start today, as NB Power seeks approval to operate Lepreau for another 25 years.

N.B. Power will try to make the case that Lepreau has an outstanding record for safety and reliability.

There’s never been an industrial accident on site since it started operating in 1983.

However, the off-site emergency plan does raise the spectre of some devastating possibilities.

They include an active attacker on site, a hostile takeover of the control room, a potential aircraft impact, a credible bomb threat and the accidental release of radioactive material.

Akagi says he’s disturbed by the idea of having radioactive waste stored on site, and so close to the Bay of Fundy.

“This is one of the most productive ecosystems in the world,” said Akagi. .

“The damage… if anybody could imagine the damage. You’re sacrificing all the fish, the clams… everything would be gone.”

At 75, Akagi says he’s been before the CNSA at least three times before.

Most recently, he presented to the Commissioners in 2017, when the regulator agreed to a five-year renewal of Lepreau.  ……………. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nuclear-regulator-hearings-lepreau-1.6327509

January 27, 2022 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

Canada’s nuclear waste body ousted liaison officer for being ‘too much on the side of the community,’ lawsuit claims

Paul Austin, 62, was NWMO’s relationship manager in South Bruce, Ont., for 9 years,    Colin Butler · CBC News ·: Jan 24, 2022   A former employee of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is suing the Canadian agency for $320,000, claiming he was “publicly humiliated” when he was constructively dismissed for being “too much on the side of the community.” 

The NWMO is a non-profit agency funded by the nuclear industry. Its goal is to find a willing host community for the country’s growing stockpile of nuclear waste.

Currently, the agency is considering the Ontario communities of Ignace and South Bruce for a proposed deep geological repository, a sprawling $23-billion catacomb that would one day act as the tomb for Canada’s 3.3 million bundles of spent nuclear fuel that are currently in interim storage. 

In South Bruce, the agency has been accused by a citizens’ group of using its financial might to groom the declining farm community into becoming a willing host for a nuclear waste storage site. The NWMO has told CBC News it only wants to leave “a positive legacy” in the community to make South Bruce a better place, regardless of its decision. 

Now, in a lawsuit filed in a Toronto court in August, Paul Austin alleges he was constructively dismissed by the NWMO for being “too much on the side of the community.”

None of the allegations have been tested in court.

Agency became ‘overinvolved,’ doc says

Austin, 62, was a relationship manager for the NWMO in South Bruce from May 2012 until he considered himself to be constructively dismissed in August 2021, according to court filings. 

His job, says the statement of claim, was to be the “primary contact’ with the NWMO in South Bruce, acting as a “trusted adviser, co-ordinator of resources” and “guide” to local town and band council officials “through the siting process.”

Court filings for the plaintiff said senior leaders within the NWMO started to become “overly involved” on a local level in the summer of 2020, undermining Austin’s work.

When community leaders in South Bruce complained, one executive told Austin he was “too much on the side of the community,” that its leadership “lacked the capacity to understand” the nuclear waste site selection process and “were damaging their chances at being selected as host for the project,” according to the lawsuit.

At one point, the statement of claim says, Austin was told by a senior executive that “if community leaders didn’t change their ways, he would stop defending South Bruce to the NWMO president and other vice-presidents, and ‘let the project go to Ignace.'”

Austin could ‘simply quit if he wanted to’

In the fall of 2020, the court documents claim, Austin started to lose many of his key responsibilities, and leadership started ignoring his advice and excluding him from phone calls with community leaders in South Bruce. 

The NWMO also created a position for a new “site director” who would “basically be the face of the NWMO in the community” and would take over many of the responsibilities of a relationship manager, according to the statement of claim. 

The agency further eroded Austin’s responsibilities in the spring of 2021, the court documents allege, overriding and rejecting some of his decisions when it came to community engagement. 

When Austin complained to his boss and human resources about the change in his role and responsibilities in July 2021, court documents said he was told by the NWMO that it felt no changes had occurred and he could “simply quit if he wanted to.” 

Austin claims dismissal ‘publicly humiliated’ him

At the same time, community leaders in South Bruce began asking questions about why Austin had been sidelined from his roles and responsibilities in the community, court documents said. 

When Austin reported the community feedback to his bosses, Austin was accused of being “arbitrary, discourteous and inaccurate in his accounting of the facts,” the claim says.  

In August 2021, Austin advised the NWMO through his lawyer “he considered himself constructively dismissed” effective Aug. 17 that year. 

Austin claims the NWMO’s actions were “harsh, vindictive, reprehensible and malicious,” and the organization’s actions have caused him to be “publicly humiliated” and and suffer “mental distress.” 

Court documents say Austin is asking for wrongful dismissal damages of $270,000, with another $50,000 in punitive and moral damages. …………………..   https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/nwmo-lawsuit-1.6320277

January 25, 2022 Posted by | Canada, Legal | Leave a comment

Unease in Ontario about planned nuclear waste dump (nobody suggests that they stop making this trash?)

The Plan to Bury All of Canada’s Nuclear Waste in One Northwest Ontario Town
This kind of dump for high-level nuclear waste has not yet been built anywhere in the world.

JANUARY 24, 2022 ON THE MONDAY SHOW BY CANADALAND Since Canada began using nuclear energy in the 1960s, the only solutions for the waste produced have been temporary. It’s now being stored onsite at nuclear plants, in containers that last a century at most.But nuclear waste takes thousands — or tens of thousands — of years to decay.

So in 2002, the federal government created the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) and tasked it with finding a location to dispose of all of Canada’s high-grade nuclear waste.

Ignace, in Northwestern Ontario, was among the communities that volunteered to host a deep geological repository (DGR), and is now one of two sites under consideration. (The other is South Bruce, in the southern part of the province.) To create the DGR, used-up nuclear reactor cores would be placed inside canisters that would then be encased in a special clay that’s been shown to protect from water and cushion from seismic activity. The canisters would then be buried inside a rock 500 metres below ground.The NWMO is confident that the project — valued at $26 billion over the next 150 years — would pose virtually no risk to the local water supply, environment, or people. But a DGR for high-level nuclear waste has not yet been built anywhere in the world.

On this week’s CANADALAND, senior producer Sarah Lawrynuik travels to the area where she grew up, to learn about the divided reaction to the nuclear-waste project and whether the anxieties are justified:The following are edited excerpts from Sarah’s conversations with some of the residents and experts she spoke to…Our water is the most precious thing, I believe, in this country right now. Because so much in the world is polluted. Just so much. And we can’t afford to take that risk. Because no matter what they do to try to make it safe, nuclear waste is not safe and will never be safe.”

— Sylvia Green-Guenette, who lives on the shore of Wabigoon Lake in Dryden. Despite being roughly as close to the proposed site as Ignace, Dryden won’t get a say in whether the project goes ahead………………..

“I think the people who are totally for it are just looking at it through one lens. They’re looking at it through the business lens.…They’re promising a certain amount of jobs — not only for the community, but specifically for Indigenous folk as well. And I think a lot of people can see through that.”

— Maya Oversby, a Métis university student who started attending community meetings about the repository in 2015, when she was 14……………………  https://www.canadaland.com/nuclear-waste-ignace-ontario/

January 25, 2022 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

NB POWER seeks unprecedented 25-year licence for Point Lepreau nuclear power station

NB Power seeks unprecedented 25-year licence for Point Lepreau nuclear power station, Coast Reporter, 24 Jan 22, FREDERICTON — The licence for Atlantic Canada’s only nuclear power generating station expires in June, and the New Brunswick Crown corporation that operates the aging CANDU-6 reactor is seeking to renew it for an unprecedented 25-year term.

he Canadian Pressabout 12 hours ago
Updated about 11 hours ago   FREDERICTON — The licence for Atlantic Canada’s only nuclear power generating station expires in June, and the New Brunswick Crown corporation that operates the aging CANDU-6 reactor is seeking to renew it for an unprecedented 25-year term.

The last two licences to operate the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, located about 40 km southwest of Saint John, N.B., were for five years each.  

“We are asking for a 25-year licence, which would be a first in Canada, based on some improvements that the regulator has made, but also on the very strong safety and reliability performance that we’ve seen from all the Canadian nuclear stations,” Jason Nouwens, director of regulatory and external affairs for NB Power, told reporters in a briefing on Friday.  

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has scheduled the first phase of the application hearing on Wednesday in Ottawa.  

Gail Wylie with the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development called the request for a 25-year licence “really absurd.”

Wylie will be one of the public interveners when the safety commission holds the second phase of the application hearings in Saint John in May.  

“We are very much interested in renewable energy because we know it’s clean and we know the problems and history of nuclear energy here,” she said in a recent interview. “Nuclear inherently has got its risks and the radioactive waste.”

Wylie said she’s concerned that extending the life of the 660-megawatt nuclear generator will slow the transition to what she calls cleaner and cheaper forms of renewable energy.

Point Lepreau opened in 1983 and operated until 2008, when it closed for a major refurbishment intended to extend its lifespan by 25 years. It was reconnected to the power grid in October 2012.  

Wylie said NB Power’s request for a licence until 2047 exceeds the lifespan targets that were announced after the refurbishment. She said she plans to ask questions about how the utility is dealing with staffing levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, threats of cyberattacks, and impacts of climate change.   

Wylie also wants to know about how plans to develop advanced small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) on the Lepreau site will impact the operation of the main reactor. Two companies, Moltex and ARC, are working with NB Power to develop the portable reactor technology.  

Nouwens, however, said the licence application doesn’t include development of SMRs.  

“The re-licensing process for Point Lepreau is completely separate from any licensing process for SMRs,” he said. “Our 25-year licence renewal covers the scope of what’s currently at Point Lepreau and what the plans would be for our current station operations.”    …………….

Like Wylie, Dalzell said he also plans to ask questions about climate change and about how Point Lepreau’s location on the shore of the Bay of Fundy could be affected by sea-level rise and extreme weather events. Kevin Bissett, The Canadian Press   https://www.coastreporter.net/the-mix/nb-power-seeks-unprecedented-25-year-licence-for-point-lepreau-nuclear-power-station-4985518

January 25, 2022 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

Holding in the deep: what Canada wants to do with its decades-long pile-up of nuclear waste

no country in the world has solved the conundrum of how to permanently dispose of waste that will stay toxic for 400,000 years. And after decades of trying hard to figure it out, Canada doesn’t seem especially close to a solution. 

This is the legacy that we are leaving for our children, our grandchildren, great grandchildren, or great, great grandchildren,”

“ it would be irresponsible and morally wrong to commit future generations to a technology that produces such dangerous material, unless there is at least one proven safe method of dealing with it,”

Canada plans to store spent nuclear fuel deep, deep underground near the Great Lakes. That is, if an industry group can find a community willing to play host,  The Narwahl, By Emma McIntosh Jan. 19, 2022,   The final resting place of Canada’s most radioactive nuclear waste could be a cave about as deep below the surface as the CN Tower is tall.

If it happens, the chamber and its network of tunnels will be drilled into bedrock in the Great Lakes basin. Pellets of spent nuclear fuel — coated in ceramic material, loaded into bundles of metal tubes the size of fireplace logs, then placed into a metal container encased in clay made from volcanic ash — will be stacked in the underground chamber sealed with concrete 10 to 12 metres thick. Though the radioactive pellets will have spent several years cooling down in pools and concrete canisters, they will still emit so much energy that their presence will heat up the space where they sit for 30 to 60 years. The warmth will linger for anywhere from a few centuries to a few millennia.

But none of this will become reality unless the industry-backed Nuclear Waste Management Organization can find a willing host. Two Ontario towns are in the running: South Bruce, located about two hours’ drive northwest of Toronto near Lake Huron, and Ignace, roughly 200 kilometres north of Lake Superior, not far from the Manitoba border. The municipalities, along with 10 First Nations and two Métis councils, are awaiting the completion of dozens of studies as they mull whether the economic benefits of such a project outweigh the risks.

“We have to make sure that there isn’t an environmental risk for us, or it’s a relatively remote risk,” said Dave Rushton, a project manager for the Municipality of South Bruce.

If anyone thinks they’re informed today, I kind of question it. We’re not fully informed because we haven’t got this information yet.”   

……….   no country in the world has solved the conundrum of how to permanently dispose of waste that will stay toxic for 400,000 years. And after decades of trying hard to figure it out, Canada doesn’t seem especially close to a solution. 

“This is the legacy that we are leaving for our children, our grandchildren, great grandchildren, or great, great grandchildren,” said Bzauniibiikwe, whose English name is Joanne Keeshig. She’s Wolf Clan from Neyaashiinigmiing, also known as Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation, which is located near the South Bruce proposal.

“Seven generations from now, this will not be resolved unless we start seriously taking a look at what can be done.” Modelling suggests underground nuclear waste disposal is safe. But no country has tried it yet…………….

High-level waste, meanwhile, is the responsibility of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, a non-profit established by Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power Corporation, and Hydro-Québec. In the 60 or so years that Canada has produced nuclear power, it has never had a place to dispose of spent fuel. As of 2020, the country’s nuclear power utilities had produced about three million fire log-sized bundles of it — enough to fill eight hockey arenas from the ice to the top of the boards — and that number grows by about 90,000 each year. In the absence of a place to leave it permanently, producers are currently keeping high-level waste in temporary storage near the reactors. By 2100, when the federal government says it expects all of the country’s existing nuclear plants to be decommissioned, industry projects it will be holding onto nearly 5.6 million bundles.

Accumulating nuclear waste has raised red flags for a long time. In 1978, the Ontario government commissioned a report titled “A Race Against Time,” which concluded the waste was proving trickier to handle than experts initially thought and suggested a potential moratorium on new nuclear plants if the industry didn’t progress within eight years. 

Another report from the United Kingdom the same year came to a similar but stronger conclusion, said Gordon Edwards, a mathematician who has long critiqued the nuclear industry as the president of the not-for-profit Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. 

“One of their main conclusions was that we are agreed that it would be irresponsible and morally wrong to commit future generations to a technology that produces such dangerous material, unless there is at least one proven safe method of dealing with it,” Edwards said.

“The problem with radioactivity is you can’t shut it off … You have to somehow keep it out of the environment.” 

Federal and provincial governments never issued a moratorium: construction on the Darlington plant in Bowmanville, Ont., which had been approved in 1977, began in the ‘80s. The Bruce and Pickering plants, meanwhile, continued to get new reactors. 

These days, the federal government is pushing to advance new nuclear technology, called small modular nuclear reactors (commonly known as SMRs), which some argue could be a climate mitigation tool. The technology is less efficient than larger reactors and produces more waste. Two of these new reactors might be built in the near future — the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which oversees the industry, is considering an application for one at the Chalk River Laboratories research site in Deep River, Ont., and Ontario Power Generation has announced its intent to build another at Darlington. 

In 2002, Parliament did pass legislation requiring the industry to band together and deal with its waste and later that year, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization was formed. Twenty years on, it still hasn’t figured out what to do with high-level radioactive waste. Keeping it above ground, as is done now, leaves it vulnerable to natural disasters, or human ones like terrorism and war. 

“It’s a question of ethics,” said Brian Ikeda, an associate professor at Ontario Tech University who studies the management of radioactive waste and has a contract to do upcoming work for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.

“Do you want to leave this stuff — which you don’t like and you think is really dangerous — and have your grandchildren figure out what to do with it? Because that’s what’s actually going to happen … we could be putting those people at huge risk by having this material out.”

As such, a consensus has emerged among global experts that the best way forward is to dispose of spent fuel far underground, a concept called a deep geological repository. But putting nuclear waste underground isn’t simple. 

The waste — which in worst-case scenarios could poison groundwater or soil — must be packaged securely enough to withstand a future ice age, which could bring massive glaciers three kilometres thick, heavy enough to affect underground geology. It must be placed in rock that is stable and won’t shift for 400,000 years, the length of time the Nuclear Waste Management Organization believes the waste would remain radioactive enough to be harmful if leaked. It must be climate change proof. 

It must also account for the many unknowns of future generations, who might not know how to  actively maintain the storage site, but on the other hand will hopefully be able to monitor it. It must be buried so deep that, if our languages disappear or the information about what’s sealed within is somehow lost, our descendants would be unlikely to disturb the buried chamber and expose themselves to the unimaginable risk inside.

Another challenge is the simple fact of entropy: everything breaks down over time. No matter what type of container holds the nuclear waste, its material will corrode over the course of many thousands of years, Ikeda said. The trick is to buy as much time as possible. …………………………………………….
Finding a nuclear waste disposal site in Ontario will require First Nations consent and buy-in from local towns…………………………………………………………   https://thenarwhal.ca/nuclear-waste-ignace-bruce/

January 20, 2022 Posted by | Canada, wastes | 1 Comment

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