Canada « nuclear-news

The New Nuclear Fever, Debunked

Politicians who push small reactors raise false hopes that splitting atoms can make a real dent in the climate crisis.

Andrew Nikiforuk 22 Sep 2025, The Tyee, https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2025/09/22/New-Nuclear-Fever-Debunked/?utm_source=national&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=250925&utm_term=builder

Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more.

Premier Danielle Smith proposes that nuclear power could be “Alberta’s next energy frontier.” To that end, she recently created a “nuclear engagement survey panel” to figure out how to propel economic growth in her province.

According to Smith, nuclear generators will not only help power scores of artificial-intelligence data centres in rural Alberta but also help to double oil production from the oilsands.

The promise of nuclear power “means affordable power, reliable supply and low emissions that strengthen our grid while fuelling growth,” said the premier. “It means new jobs and opportunities for Alberta workers and communities.”

The province is specifically betting on small modular reactors, or SMRs, because they, as a United Conservative Party release put it, “have the potential to supply heat and power to the oilsands, simultaneously reducing emissions and supporting Alberta’s energy future.”

Smith’s government has already given the oilsands giant Cenovus Energy $7 million to study the matter.

Smith isn’t the only premier with nuclear ambitions. New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Ontario all think the future lies in splitting atoms. Prime Minister Mark Carney has thrown the weight of the federal government behind Ontario’s Darlington New Nuclear Project. So far the feds have invested nearly $1 billion to advance this experimental small modular reactor.

The industry has new powerful promoters. Tech billionaires are now thirsting for more electricity to feed their data centres and machine intelligence. Everyone from Jeff Bezos to Bill Gates is investing in nuclear reactors.

Unfortunately, these claims that nuclear power can provide cheap energy security or reverse the persistent failure of national and global policies to reduce CO2 emissions are an illusion.

Even the 2024 World Nuclear Status Industry Report offers a reality check. It reports that apart from new reactors built in China (almost all over budget), “the promise of nuclear” has “never materialized.” It adds that there is no global nuclear renaissance and likely won’t be one. Furthermore, the report pours cold water on the ability of SMRs, a nascent technology, to play any significant role in reducing carbon emissions.

That is not to say that nuclear technology won’t play a minor role in our highly problematic energy future. But what nuclear power can’t do is as luminous as a radium dial. Due to its cost and complexity, it will not provide cheap or low-emission electricity in timeframe or scale that matters as climate change continues to broil an indifferent civilization.

“Given the time required to implement small modular reactors,” notes energy analyst David Hughes, “Smith will likely be long gone before SMRs are ever implemented in Alberta to provide power for her dreams of doubling oil production.”

Vaclav Smil, one of the world’s foremost energy ecologists, no doubt concurs. Whenever anyone asks him about the future of SMRs he says, “Give me a call or send me an email once you see such wonders built on schedule, on budget, and in aggregate capacities large enough to make a real difference.” He is not expecting any calls for at least a decade or two.

The first heyday of hype

The nuclear fixations of Smith and Carney are a telling symptom of our Titanic-like predicament. Every energy solution trotted out to solve a growing matrix of issues such as climate change or, in Alberta’s case, doubling oil production just becomes a source of more problems. Or an opportunity for corporate raiders to deplete the public purse.

Smith and other politicians might consider the brief history of nuclear energy and its rousing propaganda.

Nuclear power, after overpromising and underdelivering during its heyday of the second half of the 20th century, remains what Smil calls a “successful failure.”

Its high priests (now they are nuclear bros) promised “electrical energy too cheap to meter” and “nuplexes” that would power satellites, TV stations and desalinization plants. Atomic energy also promised to replace oil.

But complexity and brutal economics buried the techno-hype in piles of radioactive waste. Almost every large reactor ever built has been plagued by delays, technical difficulties, corruption and enormous cost overruns. A recent study that looked at 180 nuclear projects found that only five met their original cost and time goals. These economic realities explain why you don’t find a lot of nuclear reactors in Canada.

By the 1980s, such realities brought the so-called nuclear revolution to a crawl. Since then, more reactors have been retired than brought online. Global production of nuclear power probably peaked sometime around 2006. Today nuclear power accounts for about two per cent of delivered global energy consumption and that’s not likely to change much through 2050.

U.S. energy analyst Art Berman calculates that it would take the construction of 33 new plants per year for the next 27 years to move nuclear from two to four per cent of total energy supply. Smil has done his own math. To provide 10 per cent of its electrical supply, the U.S. would have to build and regulate some 1300 SMRs capable of putting out 100 megawatts per unit, he says.

And who has got the money, scientists and resources to do that in a period of growing political turmoil and economic corruption?

The new pitch

None of these realities have stopped industry lobbyists from designing a new sales pitch. If large, expensive and accident-prone reactors can’t do the trick, then surely small modular reactors are the agreeable solution. There is a need, they told Canadian politicians, “for smaller, simpler and cheaper nuclear energy in a world that will need to aggressively pursue low-carbon and clean energy technologies.”

The suggestion was that these handy reactors could be churned out by the hundreds from robot-filled factories, like electric cars. And then easily planted at communities’ doorsteps.

But the evidence shows that SMRs are not small (they occupy the area of a city block), cheap or, for that matter, any safer than large reactors.

As for those larger ones, consider the Plant Vogtle Generator in the state of Georgia. Billed as part of the nuclear renaissance, Georgia Power started new construction at this nuclear site in 2009. Where there were two aging reactors the idea was to add two new ones. The initial budget was $14 billion and the reactors were scheduled to go on stream in 2017. Instead, the project will have taken 17 years to finish at a cost of $36 billion, “making it the most expensive power plant ever built on Earth.” Georgians will soon be paying the highest electrical bills in the United States.

The cost overruns had nothing to do with regulation (a constant complaint of nuclear lobbyists) and everything to do with mismanagement and corruption. As one study noted, “inadequate Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulation and streamlining procedures meant to encourage investment in new nuclear projects contributed to excessive costs.” In nearby South Carolina a similar two-reactor project resulted in federal and state criminal investigations due to officials lying about cost of construction. Four executives even went to jail. That state wisely abandoned its nuclear white elephant.

So here’s a good question recently posed by M.V. Ramana, a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of British Columbia and author of Nuclear Is Not the Solution. “If nuclear power is so expensive and it takes so long to build a reactor, why do corporations get involved in this enterprise at all?”

The answer isn’t complicated. If the public can be convinced “to bear a large fraction of the high costs of building nuclear plants and operating them, either in the form of higher power bills or in the form of taxes… then many companies find nuclear power attractive.” In other words, if the public pays — and that’s what Smith and Carney are proposing — then a corporation can benefit.

A steep path for SMRs

Members of the public, therefore, should be aware of the risks they are being asked to take on by funding the “advanced” technology of SMRs which remains largely untested. And they should know that to achieve an economy of scale would require the production of thousands of SMRs, which is not happening anywhere any time soon.

According to JP Morgan’s annual energy 2025 report, there are only three operating SMRs in the world: two in Russia and one in China and another under construction in Argentina. None came in on budget. “The cost overruns on the China SMR was 300 per cent, on Russian SMRs 400 per cent and on the Argentina SMR (so far) 700 per cent.” All promised to be up and running in three to four years and all took 12 years or more to complete. Argentina’s SMR project began in 2014 and it’s still not finished. That may happen in 2027.

Given these construction time frames, SMR certainly won’t put a dent in climate change in the near future or even decades from now. Certainly not in Russia, which uses its SMRs to mine arctic resources and produce more oil.

And then there is the inconvenient issue of nuclear waste. You’d think something called a small reactor would pump out small volumes of waste. That’s not what researchers discovered in 2022. They concluded, “SMRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than Light Water Reactors.” Managing and disposing this waste will be problematic. In fact, they calculated, “water-, molten salt–, and sodium-cooled SMR designs will increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal by factors of two to 30.”

There is another problem with Canada’s enthusiasm for SMRs. And that has to do with regulation. UBC’s Ramana raises two pertinent worries.

The first concerns “evidence of conflicts of interest and institutional bias within Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.” That’s the regulatory body that is supposed to evaluate these complex technologies.

The second is the exclusion of small modular reactors from the Impact Assessment process. That’s right, SMRs don’t have to go through a process that would test any proponent’s claims about risks or harm to the environment. “Given the well-known hazards associated with nuclear power, these legislative gaps are particularly egregious as they expose citizens and communities to significant risks without an accompanying rigorous and participatory assessment process,” notes Ramana.

So Canadian politicians in Alberta and Ottawa are now promoting a largely untested nuclear technology as a solution to growing fossil fuel demand, rising electrical bills and the existential threat that CO2 emissions pose. In the process, they are conning citizens unless they share the facts about the true costs in dollars and to the environment. Those who don’t are promoters for an industry that exists on corporate welfare: your tax dollars.

Citizens should also know that despite being encouraged to place our hopes in a fast-approaching new era of renewable energy, fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions grew again in 2024. Building a renewables-based system that is 100 per cent firm and reliable won’t be cheap. One key reason is that relying on solar and wind power through long periods of cloudy or wind drought weather requires massive overbuilding and an extensive storage system.

In fact, there is no one technological solution that will enable humanity to continue with what Smil describes as our “stupid, insane and irresponsible” spending of energy. Smil uses those words because the global economy is now using renewable energy not to retire fossil fuels but to add to energy consumption, thereby amplifying the crisis.

An honest and imperfect response to the climate crisis would require a political, behavioural, economic and moral transition that would systematically reduce our energy and material consumption at an unprecedented pace. But that’s not an action any modern politician seems to be able to contemplate, let alone discuss.

Hence the nuclear delusions promoted in Alberta, Ottawa and pretty much everywhere timid leaders opt to sooth citizens with energy fairy tales.

September 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Canada keeps bankrolling Ukraine’s war crimes

The new prime minister, just like the old one, is handing Kiev the cash much needed at home

Eva Karene Bartlett, September 22, 2025, https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/canada-keeps-bankrolling-ukraines?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=174317268&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Following in the shameful footsteps of both Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney continues pledging support and money (which Canadians desperately need) to Ukraine, to prolong the proxy war against Russia.

Carney chose Ukrainian Independence Day to voice the Canadian government’s continued pledge to support Ukraine. As he landed in Kiev on August 24, Carney posted on X, “On this Ukrainian Independence Day, and at this critical moment in their nation’s history, Canada is stepping up our support and our efforts towards a just and lasting peace for Ukraine.”

Later in the day he posted, “After three years at war, Ukrainians urgently need more military equipment. Canada is answering that call, providing $2 billion for drones, armoured vehicles, and other critical resources.” This latest pledge brings Canada’s expenditure on Ukraine since February 2022 to nearly $22 billion.

Further, he pledged to potentially send Canadian or allied soldiers, stating, “I would not exclude the presence of troops.”

Pause for a moment to examine the utter lack of logic behind these statements: For “peace” for Ukraine, Canada will support further war to ensure more Ukrainian men are ripped off the streets and forced to the front lines, where they will inevitably die in a battle they didn’t sign up for.

Like his European counterparts, Carney’s insistence on prolonging the war is in contrast to Russia’s position of finding a resolution.

I recently spoke with former Ambassador Charles Freeman, an American career diplomat for 30 years. Speaking of how the Trump administration, “began in office by perpetuating the blindness and deafness of the Biden administration to what the Russian side in this conflict has said from the very beginning,” he outlined the terms that Russia made clear in December 2021, “and from which it has basically not wavered.”

These include: “neutrality and no NATO membership for Ukraine; protections for the Russian speaking minorities in the former territories of Ukraine; and some broader discussion of European security architecture that reassures Russia that it will not be attacked by the West, and the West that it will not be attacked by Russia.”

It’s worth keeping in mind that Canada has been one of the main belligerents in Ukraine, funding and training Ukrainian troops for many years before the 2022 start of Russia’s military operation.

Canada’s training of Ukrainian troops included members of the notorious neo-Nazi terrorists of the Azov regiment. Former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland proudly waved a Banderite flag in 2022. She was also proud of her dear grandfather, who was a chief Nazi propagandist.

In 2023, the Trudeau administration brought to speak in the Canadian parliament a Ukrainian Nazi, Yaroslav Hunka, who had been a voluntary member of the 1st Galician Division of the Waffen SS – well known for their mass slaughter of civilians.

Carney, in light of this, is merely keeping with the tradition of Ottawa’s support of extremism – including Nazism – in Ukraine (and in Canada). This support is not at all about protecting Ukrainian civilians.

Supporting Ukrainian war crimes

Canada’s continued support to Ukraine makes it complicit in the atrocities Ukraine commits. I myself have documented just some of Ukrainian war crimes in the Donbass, in 2019 and heavily throughout 2022.

These include deliberately shelling civilian areas (including with heavy-duty NATO weapons), slaughtering civilians in their homes, in markets, in the streets, in buses; peppering Donbass civilian areas with internationally prohibited PFM-1 “Petal” mines (since 2022, 184 civilians have been maimed by these, three of whom died of their injuries); and deliberately targeting medics and other emergency service rescuers.

Ukraine has also heavily shelled Belgorod and Kursk, targeting civilians, as well sending drones into Russian cities, killing civilians and destroying infrastructure.

Less detailed are Ukraine’s crimes against civilians in areas under Ukrainian control. These crimes – including rape, torture and point-blank assassination – come to light with the testimonies of terrorized civilians in regions liberated by Russia.Bring the government spending home

The social media fervor of Ukrainian hashtags and flags has died down considerably since 2022. Now, you see more and more Canadians demanding their government stop fueling war and start spending money to take care of Canadians.

Carney’s campaign pledges included easing the cost of living in Canada, yet he has taken no concrete actions to do so. In the many understandably angry replies to Carney’s latest tweets about supporting Ukraine, Canadians are demanding accountability.

“Mark Carney stop pretending you’re fighting for “freedom and sovereignty.” You just signed off on $2 BILLION of Canadian money for Ukraine while Canadians can’t even afford rent, food, or heating,” reads one of numerous such replies. “Veterans are abandoned, fentanyl floods our streets, and families collapse under inflation. You stand on foreign soil preaching about democracy while selling out the very people you’re supposed to serve. That’s not leadership that’s betrayal. Canadians never voted for this. You don’t speak for us.”

Scroll through replies to Carney’s Kiev stunt and you’ll find Canadians opposed to the wasting of still more money needed in their home country.

The most glaring hypocrisy is that while Carney wrings his hands over Ukraine, he utterly ignores the ongoing Israeli starvation and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, supported by the Canadian government.

September 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

David versus Goliath: the battle of a small indigenous community against a federal radioactive waste dump.

There are fewer than 500 of them, but they have managed to put a stop to a federal nuclear waste dump project worth several hundred million dollars…

Anne Caroline Desplanques, Journal de Montréal, September 19, 2025, https://tinyurl.com/mwuymkjp

Federal authorities plan to store the remains of the Bécancour nuclear power plant, Gentilly-1, in a dump in Chalk River, on the edge of the drinking water source for millions of Quebecers.

At a time when the Carney government is promoting nuclear power as one of the ways to make Canada an energy superpower, our investigative team has obtained rare access to this ultra-secure complex, which Ottawa wants to hand over to the Americans. We spoke with citizens and experts who are concerned about the environment and the country’s sovereignty.

There are only 365 Anishinabeg living in the tiny Kebaowek First Nation reserve in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. But through their lawyers, they have succeeded in putting a hold on a multi-million-dollar federal radioactive waste dump project on their traditional territory.

In February, the Federal Court ruled that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission had not obtained the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples before authorizing the construction of the dump, in violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In March, the court determined that the project endangers several species, including the spotted turtle, a threatened species less than 30 centimeters long that lives for about 50 years and reproduces infrequently, as it does not reach sexual maturity until around 20 years of age.

Federal lawyers have appealed both decisions. If they fail to convince the courts, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) will have to go back to the drawing board and resume consultations. In the meantime, the project, called the “near-surface waste management facility,” is on hold.

A geotextile membrane to contain radioactivity

It is intended to be a permanent storage and disposal site for up to one million cubic meters of radioactive waste. The waste will be placed on a layer of clay, sand, and geotextile approximately 1.5 meters thick, and covered with another layer of sand, rock, and a membrane.

This is not enough to protect the environment from PCBs, asbestos, heavy metals, and dozens of radioactive elements that CNSC plans to bury there, fears physicist Ginette Charbonneau of the Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive (Coalition Against Radioactive Pollution).

” Radioactive waste cannot be disposed of, it can only be isolated. For that, you need more than a membrane,” she insists.

CNSC assures that this buried waste will have “low-level” contamination and will therefore no longer pose a danger to the environment and health in 500 years, at the end of the containment cells’ useful life.

A pile of waste

But nuclear chemist Kerry Burns has his doubts. Retired from Atomic Energy of Canada since 2010, he was tasked with analyzing waste from the Chalk River laboratories to determine its radioactive content.

He explains that, in the past, CNL buried tons of waste in the sand, which they now plan to exhume and place in their new landfill. However, there are no records indicating the precise level of contamination, he says, describing a gigantic pile of mixed waste.

The project site has too much risk to leave anything to chance, insists the scientist: the landfill will be only one kilometer from the Ottawa River in sandy, porous soil.

“If the contamination escapes from the cells, it will very quickly find its way into the water, and it will be extremely difficult to measure and stop,” he warns.

Like Ms. Chabonneau, Mr. Burns argues that the materials should be isolated in a deep geological repository far from water sources.

This is the method used by one of the American companies chosen to manage CNL, Amentum: it isolates low-level waste in New Mexico in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), which has isolation chambers 660 meters underground.

September 23, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, indigenous issues, Legal, wastes | Leave a comment

Confusion About a Second Repository for Radioactive Wastes.

From: Stop SMRs Canada , Thu, 18 Sept 2025

In June, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) posted a “discussion paper” outlining their intention to site a second deep geological repository (DGR) for radioactive waste.

The NWMO announcement of an additional DGR has caused confusion. MPs are having trouble keeping the story straight among the various nuclear waste schemes. Already constituents are receiving letters from MPs that clearly confuse the two, which puts MPs’ credibility on the line, as well further reducing public trust in the nuclear industry.

The latest NWMO DGR proposal is for a mix of “intermediate level” radioactive and – as an add on – high-level radioactive waste from future reactors.

The NWMO, a collaboration between the provincial utilities that generate and own the high-level nuclear fuel waste produced by nuclear reactors, has a mandate under the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act (2002) to develop an option to manage the highly-radioactive nuclear fuel waste long-term.

The NWMO’s June 2025 paper is purportedly premised on the “Integrated Strategy for Radioactive Waste” which they proposed to the federal government in 2023.

Making a careful distinction between government policy and industry strategy, the Minister of Natural Resources had acknowledged the nuclear industry’s proposed strategy for low and intermediate level wastes, framing the proposed strategy as one of “two fundamental recommendations” (the other related to low level wastes). The Minister summarized the plan thus: “Intermediate-level waste and non-fuel high-level waste will be disposed of in a deep geological repository with implementation by the NWMO.”

However, over the last 18 months the NWMO has increasingly been adding to the proposed DGR mix the high-level waste fuel waste from future small modular reactors and from the mega-reactors proposed for both the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in southwestern Ontario and the Peace River area in Alberta.

The siting process for the DGR for high-level waste was extremely divisive and since the selection of the Revell site in northwestern Ontario in November 2024 there has been rising opposition and now a legal challenge from a nearby First Nation. The new DGR proposal promises more of the same divisiveness, opposition, and political pressures.

September 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

U.S. Nuclear Reactors will NOT Build a Strong Canada

Ontario Clean Air Alliance -Angela Bischoff, Director, Sept 17, 2025

Prime Minister Carney’s directive to the Major Projects Office to fast-track Doug Ford’s plan to build U.S. nuclear reactors in Ontario will: raise electricity rates, jeopardize national security and delay action on climate change.

New U.S. GE-Hitachi nuclear reactors are the highest-cost option to meet Ontario’s electricity needs – costing 2 to 8 times more than new solar and wind power. As a result, these U.S. reactors will make life less affordable for Ontario’s hard-working families; and they will make Ontario’s industries less competitive.

Building GE-Hitachi reactors will also jeopardize our national security by making Ontario dependent on enriched uranium imports from the U.S. – imports which President Trump could cut off at a moment’s notice.

Finally, building new nuclear reactors is the slowest option to phase-out gas power and protect our climate. Under Doug Ford’s nuclear & gas plan, 25% of our electricity will be produced by burning gas in 2030 – up from only 4% in 2017. To add insult to injury, more than 70% of Ontario’s gas supply is imported from the U.S.

With wildfires burning around the world, we need to invest in the options that can reduce our climate-damaging emissions ASAP, not decades from now. We simply can’t afford to wait 10 to 20 years for new reactors to be built, when solar and wind can be built within months to three years. Combined with batteries, wind and solar can keep our lights on at a fraction of the cost of new nuclear reactors.

Instead of subsidizing the research and development costs for a U.S. multinational’s first-of-their-kind, experimental new nuclear reactors, we should be investing in options that will build a stronger, more prosperous and more secure Canada.

Here is what Prime Minister Carney should do.

1. Rescind his request for the Major Project Office (MPO) to fast-track the building of U.S. nuclear reactors in Ontario.

2. Rescind the Canada Infrastructure Bank’s $970 million loan for the building of GE-Hitachi’s first new nuclear reactor.

3. Direct the MPO to fast-track roof top and parking lot solar in Ontario.

4. Direct the MPO to fast-track cutting the red tape that is blocking the development of Great Lakes offshore wind power.

5. Direct the MPO to fast-track the expansion of the inter-provincial electricity transmission links between Manitoba and Ontario and Ontario and Quebec to increase our ability to import low-cost water, wind and solar power from Manitoba, Quebec and the Maritimes.

September 20, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

Alberta Revives Its Nuclear Energy Dreams.

And a cabinet minister gets a free trip for ‘Canada-UK Nuclear Day’ in London.

TheTyee, David Climenhaga 28 Aug 2025

Alberta Affordability Minister Nathan Neudorf jetted off Wednesday for a nice 10-day holiday in the United Kingdom — mostly at his own expense.

Not entirely at his own expense, though, since Alberta taxpayers will presumably be picking up the tab for his airfare in his other cabinet role as minister of utilities (with the exception, this being Alberta, of utilities that generate electricity of the renewable sort).

That ministerial job got him a nice invite to the World Nuclear Symposium in London and a corking “Canada-U.K. Nuclear Day” party on Wednesday at Canada House.

If you’re thinking you probably couldn’t afford a vacation like that, it’s nice to know the minister of making sure you can afford stuff (how’s that going, anyway?) will have the opportunity to “explore nuclear energy in London,” as the Alberta government’s news release put it Wednesday, with well-heeled nuclear industry lobbyists, CEOs and the like from all over the world.

In all, the MLA for Lethbridge-East (and perhaps soon to be the MLA for the new riding of Lethbridge-Gerrymander) will get to spend 15 days in Blighty, at least five of them in a very nice hotel, I’m sure.

“Alberta’s government is working hard to secure an affordable, reliable and sustainable energy future and nuclear can play a key role,” Neudorf said in the inevitable canned quote in the government’s news release Wednesday. “Gatherings like this one are an excellent opportunity to connect with international partners and I look forward to learning more about the potential of this technology and how it can fit into Alberta’s energy mix.”

I’ll bet. There’s nothing cheap about nuclear power. Even the so-called “small modular reactors” that the United Conservative Party is so enamoured of are multibillion-dollar megaprojects, and they never come in on budget. Indeed, SMRs may be nuclear reactors, but they’re not small and they’re not really modular. The term is a marketing gimmick.

“Nuclear projects are almost always subject to time and cost overruns,” explained the Calgary-based Pembina Institute in a news release this week, “with some being delayed by up to a decade and costing double the original projected amount.”

If you want cheap and reliable energy, as the Pembina news release rather plaintively pointed out, wind, solar and battery storage would be just the ticket. Those are things that Neudorf and the United Conservative Party aren’t about to consider, though, probably because of the turbines that spoiled the view at Donald Trump’s golf course in Scotland.

Nevertheless, tout le monde nuclear energy will be in London — even a senior official of Rosatom, the Russian state atomic energy corporation. (That said, you have to dig a bit to suss out the Rosatom connection.)

Meanwhile, the Alberta government wants to hear what you think about nuclear power — presumably as long as it’s the same as what they think. Otherwise, get lost!

Premier Danielle Smith struck yet another panel Monday, this one to sell Albertans on the idea of adopting nuclear power — pardon me, “to join the conversation on nuclear energy in the province.”

There’s even a survey — and I can tell you it’s not quite as obviously biased as the “Alberta Next” surveys, although I’d say it’s been designed to help suss out voter concerns so that talking points can be drafted quickly to tell you to have no fear for atomic energy……………………………………

If you worry about this stuff, nothing’s going to happen any time soon except more lobbying and conferences in interesting locales for UCP ministers to attend.

A small modular reactor project has never been successfully completed outside of China and Russia. Indeed, some say Rosatom’s Akademik Lomonosov, dubbed by some the “floating Chernobyl,” may be the world’s only working small modular reactor…..https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/08/28/Alberta-Revives-Nuclear-Energy-Dreams/

August 31, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Ecological Justice group explains impacts of the nuclear project on Alberta

Except from our Ecological Justice group:

The Project Affects Alberta
The Guidelines do not address the scope of impacts to the province.
This nuclear project proposed for Peace River has ramifications for the future of Alberta in that it would lock the province into
● the financial burden of this very expensive energy option with on-going post-operative costs
● the diversion of money and other resources from cleaner, safer, cheaper energy options and grid modernization to rapidly support climate action
● the on-site security risks
● the risk of nuclear reactors as stranded assets
● the risk of the nuclear reactors being diverted to military use
● the long-term storage of low and intermediate radioactive wastes
● the radiologic impacts on life and the environment not only locally but far-reaching should a severe event occur
● the issue of nuclear fuel waste for which no method of containment is known that will isolate it for the timeframe of its inherent risk of chemical and radiological toxicity:
○ Alberta may be required to host a nuclear fuel waste deep geological disposal site with the timeframe of “indefinitely” or
○ Alberta and other provinces may suffer the transportation-related consequences of moving Alberta’s nuclear fuel waste to an out-of-province disposal site
Require the proponent to address the scope of impacts to the province.

August 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

How did cs137, a fission product get into the Indonesian shipping container?

Dennis LENEVEU, 22 Aug 25,

Re: [Nuclear Waste Watch] US FDA guidance on health impacts of cesium exposure.

Indonesia has only research reactors. If the cs137 contamination came from these small reactors what about all the large reactors such as CANDUs that have continual measured stack releases of beta gamma particulate that would contain cs137 that is volatile?

CANDUs emit large amounts of carbon 14 that has been measured at elevated levels in tree rings around Pickering. Cs137 would also be expected to be in tree rings wood. Wood is used as shipping containers and many other uses such as furniture and interior housing lumber and wood.

Both carbon 14 and cs147 are known to off gass. C14 is particularly a problem being a beta emitter that would never be measured. Cs137 is a gamma emitter that is easily measured with a Geiger counter. Carbon 14 off gassing has been documented in the Bruce low and intermediate level waste facility but is not routinely measured.

Huge amounts of carbon 14 has been deposited around reactors for years. Carbon14 accumulates in the biosphere. With a half life of 5730 years it’s all still around gradually building up in the environment. The stack releases allowed for reactors are based on airborne exposure only. The carbon 14 is greatly dispersed in the air but settles out and deposits in the environment. Gradual bioaccumulation is ignored in regulations for emission standards.

August 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment, Indonesia | Leave a comment

[SMRs] Twin Trails of Treachery Expose – by Paul McKay

The 80th anniversary of the harrowing Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945 was earlier this month. As you know, since then the spread of nuclear weapons has largely occurred under the guise of ‘peaceful use’ reactors and uranium, for which Canada has been deeply complicit.

Despite this, Canada is now helping to underwrite the development of a new wave of reactors intended for domestic use and export. All will produce plutonium, embed proliferation risks (such as India’s use of a Candu to build its first bomb in 1974), and magnify the dangers of a global ‘plutonium economy’ which advocates are shamelessly promoting as a solution to the climate crisis.

Below is a link to a historical essay which will be a new chapter of “Atomic Accomplice”. I hope it will serve as a warning against such reckless pending public policy. It documents the secret, virtually unreported atomic weapons linkages between Canada and Israel during several decades – in which both countries mutually courted catastrophe while pursuing global reactor sales or atomic weaponry.

This essay contains much alarming (but accurate) material. The pending risks of vastly increased plutonium use warrant circulating. The 80th anniversary of the harrowing Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945 was earlier this month. As you know, since then the spread of nuclear weapons has largely occurred under the guise of ‘peaceful use’ reactors and uranium, for which Canada has been deeply complicit.

Attached is a historical essay which will be a new chapter of “Atomic Accomplice”. I hope it will serve as a warning against such reckless pending public policy. It documents the secret, virtually unreported atomic weapons linkages between Canada and Israel during several decades – in which both countries mutually courted catastrophe while pursuing global reactor sales or atomic weaponry.

Please circulate this PDF, if you see fit, as widely as possible to your and other allied organizations. It contains much alarming (but accurate) material. The pending risks of vastly increased plutonium use warrant circulating. https://www.cleanairalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/TWIN-TRAILS-OF-TREACHERY-FINAL-AUGUST-2025.pdf

August 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Quebec engineering body finds former SNC-Lavalin CEO guilty on multiple counts of misconduct.

Aajah Sauter, August 12, 2025

Former SNC-Lavalin Group chief executive Jacques Lamarre has been found guilty of seven of 14 allegations of misconduct made against him by Quebec’s professional order for engineers.

Last fall, the disciplinary council of L’Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec began several days of hearings to decide whether Mr. Lamarre infringed the organization’s code of ethics and professional duties in the early 2000s when he was CEO of SNC-Lavalin, now known as AtkinsRéalis Group Inc.

These hearings followed an investigation by the Ordre’s Office of the Syndic, which then launched a formal complaint against the former engineering executive.

The Syndic made 14 separate allegations against Mr. Lamarre as part of its disciplinary complaint, which are related to previous legal cases involving the company. The allegations link broadly to SNC-Lavalin’s past business conduct as it sought contracts in Libya, as well as past political financing activities in Montreal.

Among the findings of guilt, L’Ordre concluded that SNC-Lavalin under Mr. Lamarre’s leadership directly or indirectly made payments amounting to about $2-million to the family of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, notably for expenses incurred by his son Saadi while he stayed in Canada.

Mr. Lamarre was found not guilty on allegations that he sanctioned the purchase of a luxury yacht for Saadi.

The former CEO last year denied the Syndic’s allegations. In a statement released Wednesday, Mr. Lamarre announced his resignation as a retired member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec. He said he’s “disappointed” with the way the disciplinary investigation was conducted and called the ruling “deeply unfair” and “unreasonable.”

“The Syndic of the Order granted complete immunity to certain witnesses with conflicts of interest, while seeking to hold me responsible for actions for which those same witnesses were found guilty in other proceedings. ”

In early 2012, Swiss and Canadian police discovered questionable payments from SNC-Lavalin that ran through bank accounts in Switzerland and other countries. These payments were later found to be bribes to procure contracts for projects in Libya during Moammar Gadhafi’s rule, as SNC-Lavalin sought a share of contracts offered by his government.

In 2015, SNC-Lavalin and two affiliates were charged with fraud and violating Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act tied to its dealings in Libya. The company requested a settlement to the case, commonly known as a deferred prosecution agreement, but was denied.

SNC-Lavalin solidified an agreement with prosecutors in 2019 for the company’s construction division to plead guilty to a single charge of fraud while the corruption charge was dropped. The company agreed to pay a $280-million fine and received a three-year probation order.

In 2016, the company acknowledged that it engaged in a scheme that involved SNC-Lavalin employees being encouraged to donate to federal political parties and then be reimbursed through fake personal-expense claims, bonuses or benefits. Canadian law states that businesses cannot make financial contributions to political parties irrespective of candidates.

The company later entered into a compliance agreement with the Commissioner of Canada Elections. SNC-Lavalin also admitted that it used a similar strategy for donations to Quebec political parties.

No penalties for Mr. Lamarre were announced by L’Ordre, though it said it will set a date for sanctions. He could be revoked of his status as a professional engineer, or face fines.

“I am proud of my career and the role I played as an executive at SNC-Lavalin,” Mr. Lamarre said in his statement. “But given the ongoing conflict with the Order and the way I have been treated, I have no choice but to resign.”

August 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Legal | Leave a comment

A Second CANDU Reactor for Point Lepreau? Let’s Ponder.

A new CANDU reactor does not exist. The current reactor at Point Lepreau is a CANDU 6, the same model as the one Hydro-Québec shut down permanently in 2012 and is now in the process of decommissioning. There are no plans to design a new CANDU 6.

August 6, 2025, Susan O’Donnell and Frank Greening, https://www.theenergymix.com/a-second-candu-reactor-for-point-lepreau-lets-ponder/

Over the summer, New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt mused to journalists about building a second CANDU reactor at the Point Lepreau nuclear site on the Bay of Fundy.

“A second CANDU is not far-fetched,” she told the Telegraph Journal. On the weekend, Holt enthused about the idea in a CBC story about the Eastern Energy Partnership pitch to Prime Minister Mark Carney.

A new CANDU reactor for New Brunswick? It’s a puzzling thought, worth pondering.

Let’s put aside for a moment that the current CANDU reactor at the Point Lepreau site is an economic nightmare, its poor performance the main reason NB Power loses money almost every year. Overspends on the original reactor and the rebuild together represent almost two-thirds of NB Power’s nearly $6-billion debt.

Let’s forget that more than 25 years ago in Ontario, the provincial utility Ontario Hydro was similarly effectively bankrupt before it was split up, leaving a $20-billion stranded debt, largely left over from its CANDU nuclear construction program. Ontario taxpayers and ratepayers were left holding the bag for that $20 billion, paying it back on their electricity bills. A recent investigation found that: “In 2050 Ontario will still be paying the debt of the nuclear program of the 1970s and 80s.”

Let’s also try to forget that the New Brunswick government gets its nuclear advice from NB Power (the utility that loses money almost every year), the same utility that in 2018 recommended the province invite two start-up companies from the United Kingdom and the United States that had never built a nuclear reactor to come to New Brunswick and, with their experimental reactor designs, start a new nuclear export industry.

It was a breathtakingly risky recommendation that can most kindly be described as “wishful thinking.” In the seven years since, despite more than $95 million to the companies from provincial and federal taxpayers, their two “advanced” designs for small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have failed to attract enough private sector financing and almost certainly will never be built in New Brunswick.

Finally, are we willing to ignore the fact that the Peskotomuhkati Nation never consented to the current CANDU reactor on its homeland at Point Lepreau, has made numerous interventions against plans to put the two SMRs on the site, and is highly unlikely to consent to a second CANDU?

For this ponder, let’s park all those troubling facts and focus on what we know about a potential second CANDU reactor for Point Lepreau.

AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC-Lavalin) owns the exclusive rights to design a new CANDU. The engineering firm announced in late 2023 that its new CANDU design is called Monark. So far, the CANDU Monark is a computer model, currently registered with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission as in a “familiarization and planning” stage with the start date for regulatory reviews “to be determined”.

Although AtkinsRéalis has released almost no technical details about its proposed design, the company did predict the CANDU Monark’s capacity factor, an important parameter for evaluating a nuclear reactor design. The capacity factor is a measure of efficiency, how often a nuclear reactor (or any other kind of power plant) operates at maximum power output over a specific period.

Predicted capacity factors require years of reactor operation to prove reliability. In 2023, the global average nuclear power plant capacity factor was 81.5%. Predicting a higher average capacity factor would mean AtkinsRéalis believes the CANDU Monark design can produce power more consistently and at a greater percentage of its potential than the average reactor.

This “new” CANDU Monark design has similar features (cooled and moderated with heavy water, similar core channels and heat transport system) to the design of the reactor at the Darlington nuclear site in Ontario, the last CANDU ordered in Canada more than 30 years ago. The lifetime average capacity factor for Darlington’s four CANDU units is 83%, in line with the global average.

Yet a paper sponsored by AtkinsRéalis at the June 2024 conference of the Canadian Nuclear Society claims the annual capacity of the CANDU Monark design is more than 95%, much higher than the global average or the actual number at Darlington.

How does AtkinsRéalis plan to boost this CANDU’s average capacity factor from 83% to 95%? The answer: more wishful thinking!

Now, back to the existing CANDU 6 reactor at Point Lepreau—which is currently, again, closed for repairs, this time for five months. After refurbishment, from the start of 2013 to the end of 2024, its capacity factor was 78%, below the global average. Last year, with a multi-month, unplanned shutdown for a generator repair, the reactor operated at 32% capacity. An investigation by CBC predicts that 2024 may be its worst operational year ever.

Earlier this year, the NB Power CEO said the root of the reactor’s problems can be traced to when the reactor was refurbished from 2008 to 2012. To save money, the plant’s supporting infrastructure was not upgraded, and now that infrastructure is breaking down.

Lack of money is a core constraint for New Brunswick’s nuclear plans. In 2024, another CBC investigation revealed a consultant report that linked the poor performance of NB Power’s nuclear reactor to the fact that since the refurbishment, the utility has not spent nearly enough to maintain it.

The basic problem is that New Brunswick lacks the capacity to operate a nuclear reactor. In addition to a financially stretched utility with a small grid, the province lacks nuclear management expertise.

When the plant reopened in 2012 after refurbishment, NB Power contracted a management team from Ontario Power Generation (OPG). Later, the utility hired a manager living outside the country. He billed the utility for travel expenses from his home to his work in New Brunswick in addition to his salary, a total that reached $1.3 million but delivered no improvement in the reactor’s performance. In 2023, NB Power said goodbye to the American and contracted OPG management again.

Across the globe [pdf], it is hard to find an electrical grid as small as NB Power’s with a nuclear reactor. The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends that: “A single power plant should represent no more than 10% of the total installed grid capacity.” NB Power’s Point Lepreau plant exceeds 15% of its grid capacity, including the energy available under power purchase agreements.

For decades, the utility has had oversized nuclear ambitions. As far back as 1972, a federal Department of Finance official warned [pdf] against subsidizing a power reactor for “a small, high-cost utility with barely enough cash flow to finance its present debt,” calling New Brunswick’s nuclear plans “the equivalent of a Volkswagen family acquiring a Cadillac as a second car.”

The nuclear industry depends on wishful thinking, plus its hubris and supreme confidence that have bamboozled generations of energy ministers and premiers into believing its overblown hype.

So, a second CANDU at Point Lepreau? The Premier would be wise to ignore the promotion and sales puff from NB Power and its nuclear industry friends and review the facts. Follow the money, or in this case, the billions the province has lost so far. A decision to build a second CANDU at Point Lepreau would be not only puzzling, but economically reckless.

Dr. Susan O’Donnell is a social scientist specializing in technology adoption and an Adjunct Research Professor and lead investigator of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University. Dr. Frank Greening is nuclear research scientist with a PhD in Chemistry, retired from Ontario Power Generation (OPG). This story was first published by NB Media Co-op, and is republished by permission.

August 11, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, technology | Leave a comment

Canada still arming Israel despite official ban, report finds.

Wyatt Reed· August 1, 2025, https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/01/canada-arming-israel-despite-ban/

In the course of a week, Canada accused Israel of violating international law, announced Ottawa will recognize a Palestinian state, and sent aid to be airlifted to Gaza. But a shocking new report makes clear that the proposed 51st state still arms Israel’s death machine.

Canada sent at least 391 shipments containing bullets, military equipment, weapons parts, aircraft components, and communication devices to Israel since late 2023, despite Ottawa’s repeated claims to have ended weapons deliveries to the apartheid state, a new report has revealed.

By sifting through data from the Israel Tax Authority, researchers at Arms Embargo Now discovered what they called “a continuous, massive pipeline of Canadian weapons flowing directly to Israel” comprising over 400,000 bullets, multiple shipments of cartridges, and a variety of parts for Israel’s fleet of F-35 fighter jets. Since mid-2024, Israel received four shipments of Doppler Velocity Sensors, which provide navigation data needed for the F-35’s target acquisition and weapons delivery systems, five shipments of lightweight composite panels used by the planes, and two shipments of Modular Product Testers, which are used to diagnose problems on Israel’s air force fleet.

Of the 391 deliveries identified, the report’s authors were able to track direct 47 shipments of military gear with detailed commercial shipping records sent by Canadian companies to Israeli companies. 38 of those shipments were sent to Israel’s biggest military firm, Elbit Systems, and its various subsidiaries.

In March 2024, the previous Canadian administration claimed to have halted all permits for arms shipments to Tel Aviv, after the legislature passed a non-binding motion declaring that “Israel must respect international humanitarian law” and that “the price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians.” In the following months, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted Canada no longer facilitated Israel’s horrors, going as far as publicly chiding one concerned Palestinian, “we’ve stopped exports of arms to Israel.”

But just before the apparent shift in policy, Ottawa greenlit a massive number of permits for Israeli-bound weapons deliveries, front-loading hundreds of orders in an apparent attempt to preemptively circumvent their own ban. Of the $30.6 million in military equipment sent to Israel in 2023 – the highest yearly total on record – $28.5 million was approved between October and December. Even today, many of those shipments continue to be fulfilled. To date, just 30 permits for military deliveries have been cancelled by Canada, which made that decision following a similar move by the UK in mid-2024 after the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel was violating international law.

“The Canadian government appears to have pursued a strategy of rushing through a record-breaking number of arms export permit approvals to Israel prior to publicly committing to pause approving any new ones,” Arm Embargo Now explained in their report. “This was then quietly undermined by a series of exceptions and loopholes,” researchers wrote, suggesting “the government’s policy shifts were… aimed at diffusing public criticism while maintaining material support.”

Other Canadian institutions to have assisted Israel’s genocidal siege include a number of its universities. A separate report published by Just Peace Advocates found that in 2023 up to $100 million went completely untaxed as it was funneled to Israeli universities from their ‘charitable’ arms in Canada. The money went to a variety of schools with strong ties to occupation forces, including Israel’s self-described “academic home of soldiers,” Bar-Ilan University, which took in around $4 million that year.

In addition, nearly $17 million was sent tax-free to Ben-Gurion University in 2023, which bragged of having “transformed itself into a back office for war” in October that year. Months later, Ben-Gurion announced the creation of two new “elite academic programs for future [Israeli military] recruits, as part of preparations for the transfer of IDF technological units to southern Israel.” The university says it works “in tandem” with the Israeli Air Force Flight School and claims to have trained around 1,000 pilots for military service.

Also receiving untaxed funds was Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, which has been described as “the incubator of most nuclear weapons work in Israel.” Weizmann has well-documented ties to a variety of Israeli spies implicated in efforts to steal nuclear secrets, and drew international attention after it was partially destroyed in a retaliatory Iranian airstrike on June 15.

According to Just Peace Advocates, Canadian sources delivered over $36 million to the Weizmann Institute in 2023.

August 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Report Slams Canada’s “Systematic Deception” Over Weapons Transfers to Israel

Activists say the government is misleading the public as Canadian weapons flow to Israel despite pledged restrictions.

By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours , Truthout, July 29, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/report-slams-canadas-systematic-deception-over-weapons-transfers-to-israel/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=dd4ceeb9ab-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_07_29_09_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-dd4ceeb9ab-650192793

Rights advocates in Canada are accusing the government of misleading the public by allowing huge amounts of weapons to be sent to Israel despite a pledge to curtail such transfers.

In a new report issued on July 29, a coalition of advocacy groups released new details about the scope of Canadian-made arms exports to Israel amid the country’s war on the Gaza Strip.

Using commercial shipping and Israeli import data, the report found that at least 47 shipments of military related components were sent from Canadian weapons manufacturers to Israeli arms companies between October 2023 and July 2025.

That’s only a few months after the Canadian government said it was opposed to Canadian-made weapons being used in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Rachel Small, the Canada lead at World Beyond War, one of the groups behind the report, told Truthout that the findings expose “one of the biggest propaganda campaigns in Canadian foreign policy in many decades”.

“What we’ve seen over the past 21 months is, over and over again, Liberal [government] ministers standing in parliament, making public statements, claiming that Canada had paused or restricted or limited or was no longer sending arms to Israel,” Small told Truthout in an interview.

“And while Palestinian families were literally burying their children [in Gaza] … we now know that fighter jet parts literally flew from Halifax to Israel on Air Canada flights, hidden in the cargo underneath passenger seats,” Small said.

“What this report reveals is not bureaucratic oversight; what this looks like is systematic deception. It makes Canada directly complicit in what scholars and organizations all agree is a genocide.”

Pressure to Suspend Exports

The report’s findings come as Israel faces a fresh wave of global condemnation over its blockade of Gaza, which has led to a starvation crisis across the bombarded coastal enclave.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, nearly 150 Palestinians have died of hunger since the war began in October 2023, including dozens in recent days.

More than half of those casualties are children, and the United Nations has warned that the number of starvation-linked deaths could rapidly rise unless aid is allowed into the territory in a sustained way.

But long before Israel’s escalation of its blockade in March, people around the world had been calling on their governments to stop sending weapons to Israel that could be used in deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

In Canada, Palestinian rights advocates and other civil society groups demanded an arms embargo against Israel and called on the government to uphold its obligations under the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

That pact stipulates that signatories cannot send arms to a country when they have knowledge that those weapons could be used in war crimes, genocide, and attacks on civilians, among other violations of international law.

In March 2024, Canada’s parliament passed a non-binding motion urging the government to suspend further arms sales to Israel.

As pressure continued to mount, in September of last year, then-Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly announced that the government had not approved any new export permits for Israel since January 8, 2024.

Joly said Ottawa had suspended “around 30” existing permits. She also said the government was opposed to a planned sale by the United States of Canadian-made weapons parts to Israel that was made public just a few weeks earlier.

“Our policy is clear: We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza, period,” Joly told reporters at the time.

Millions in Arms Sent in 2024

Still, human rights advocates immediately questioned why the government didn’t suspend all permits that had been granted for weapons destined for Israel.

The report also noted that, under a decades-old defense pact between Canada and the U.S., most Canadian-made weapons and weapons parts do not need permits to be exported to the country’s southern neighbor.

That has created what some experts have described as a black hole in terms of reporting requirements — and raised concerns that Canadian weapons components could end up in Israel if they are shipped via the U.S.

In fact, in March, anti-war group Project Ploughshares reported that a Canadian Crown corporation — a government contracting agency — had signed a contract in September 2024 with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide artillery propellants used to launch explosive 155m shells that will be sent to Israel.

“This agreement was finalized while the intensive bombardment of Gaza continued,” Project Ploughshares noted, as well as after Canada announced it was suspending weapons exports to Israel.

Tuesday’s report focused on direct military exports from Canada to Israel, not weapons that reach Israel via the U.S.

In an emailed statement sent to Truthout on Wednesday afternoon, Global Affairs Canada, Canada’s foreign affairs department, said it could not confirm the details included in the report, including the number of shipments of items to Israel as well as their method of transit. The department also did not directly answer Truthout’s question about why it hasn’t cancelled all existing weapons export permits to Israel.

“Canada has not approved any new permits for items to Israel that could be used in the current conflict in Gaza since January 8, 2024,” it said, adding that the approximately 30 export permits that were suspended last year “remain suspended and cannot be used to export to Israel”.

“Global Affairs Canada continues to assess all permit applications on a case-by-case basis under Canada’s risk assessment framework, including the criteria set out in the Arms Trade Treaty and enshrined in the Export and Import Permits Act. Any items requiring an export permit adhere to Canada’s rigorous export permit regime,” it said.

The government’s own data shows that Canada exported $13.8 million ($18.9 million Canadian) in direct military supplies and technology to Israel last year.

The weapons were authorized for transfer through 164 permits issued before the January 8 freeze, the government said.

“Global Affairs Canada’s approach since January 8, 2024, has been to not issue permits and to suspend a limited number of export permits for military items destined for Israel,” the ministry said in its report on 2024 exports.

“These suspensions allow for further review into whether the authorized items could be used in the ongoing conflict in a manner inconsistent with Canada’s foreign policy objectives.”

Two-Way Arms Embargo

Tuesday’s report calls on the Canadian government to impose a two-way arms embargo that would cancel all existing arms export permits from Canada and prevent Canada from importing weapons from Israel.

That’s because advocates say the Canadian government should not be buying weapons marketed as “battle tested” on Palestinians or providing profits to Israeli arms manufacturers.

The report also urges Canada to end indirect weapons transfers to Israel through the U.S., including by requiring “end-use assurances” that no arms sent to the U.S. will end up in Israel.

Corey Balsam, national coordinator of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, another one of the groups involved in the report, said arms embargoes are tools the Canadian government has used before in other circumstances.

“I think the government recognizes that it has a responsibility to stop the arms [to Israel], and that’s why they’ve taken some limited measures. But those measures are obviously insufficient,” Balsam told Truthout.

“We’ve grown up with this idea of never again post-Holocaust and that’s something that we hear politicians in Canada repeating,” he said. “And here we are, just letting this happen, and worse, actually contributing. It’s really shameful.”

Balsam added that “if Canada really supports international law and human rights, it needs to be applied across the board”, including to its ally, Israel.

Small also said Canada is at a crossroads.

“I think they are really going to have to choose whether they’re going to continue to try to hide the Canada-Israel arms trade … or whether they’re going to take action and actually stop the flow of these weapons,” Small said.

“We’re not asking them to move mountains,” she added. “It’s the bare minimum to [ask them to] stop Canada from being deeply complicit in what I would say is one of the greatest moral crises of our time.”

August 1, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, weapons and war | Leave a comment

AtkinsRéalis eyeing U.S. market for nuclear technology push.

COMMENT -For nuclear industry trackers…

Re the last two paragraphs, you have to wonder, do they really believe this stuff or are they shameless grifters?

Nicolas Van Praet, July 28, 2025, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-atkinsrealis-eyeing-us-market-for-nuclear-technology-push/

AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. is moving to deploy its nuclear-reactor technology into the United States, a surprise push one analyst said could bolster the company’s revenue and exposure to American investors if it manages to clinch deals against growing competition.

The Canadian engineering company has “begun to explore opportunities for alternative large nuclear reactor technologies, notably Candu reactors, in the U.S.,” Joe St. Julian, president of the nuclear operations at AtkinsRéalis, said in an e-mailed statement Monday. Talks have started with U.S. regulatory agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Nuclear Security Administration, to assess licensing and other potential concerns, the company said.

The Financial Times was first to report on the corporation’s plans.

AtkinsRéalis chief executive Ian Edwards has reshaped the engineering company, previously known as SNC-Lavalin, by selling oil and gas assets and pivoting toward a simplified business model centred on engineering services and consulting work. Pushing its nuclear business hard is a big part of the new strategy.

AtkinsRéalis joins several nuclear energy multinationals weighing moves into the U.S., attracted by President Donald Trump’s aim to quadruple America’s atomic energy capacity over the next 25 years to meet rising demand for electricity. The President signed executive orders in May directing the Department of Energy to expedite construction of 10 large reactors by 2030, heralding what the White House science policy director called an “American nuclear renaissance.”

AtkinsRéalis holds an exclusive licence for Canada’s Candu reactor, which uses a heavy water technology to process natural uranium as fuel. It is marketing the 740-megawatt Enhanced Candu 6 along with a proposed 1,000-megawatt model called the Monark.

Executives with the Montreal-based company acknowledge that countries typically favour their own sovereign nuclear technology, which would give Pennsylvania-based reactor builder Westinghouse home-field advantage in any new contracts (Westinghouse is Canadian-owned). But they’re betting Westinghouse won’t be able to build 10 reactors at the same time, leaving room for Candu.

Analysis: Armed with Canadian taxpayer support, AtkinsRéalis and Westinghouse are competing to export nuclear reactors. Which one will prevail?

“We are positively surprised by this development,” Desjardins Securities analyst Benoît Poirier said in a note. He had believed a U.S. contract was not possible for AtkinsRéalis given past failed attempts to bring Candu reactors stateside as well as “the current protectionist geopolitical climate” in Canada and the U.S.

On top of that, the competitive landscape is more intense in the U.S., the analyst said, with international players such as Kepco (Korea Electric Power Corp.), legacy firms such as Westinghouse, and small modular reactor disruptors such as GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy, NANO Nuclear Energy Inc., NuScale Power Corp., Oklo Inc., TerraPower, X-Energy Inc. and newcleo all vying for a piece of the pie.

“If AtkinsRéalis does secure a new-build reactor south of the border, it would not only represent incremental growth but also boost visibility with U.S. investors,” Mr. Poirier said. Despite the company’s share price run-up over the past two years, the stock remains significantly “under-owned” outside Canada, with U.S. ownership at just 8 per cent of the total, he said.

By comparison, Canadian companies such as Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd.

CP-T -1.07%decrease

and TFI International Inc.

TFII-T -3.15%decrease

have U.S. ownership levels above 30 per cent. Plane maker Bombardier Inc.

BBD-B-T -0.02%decrease

has grown its U.S. investor base to nearly 20 per cent in recent years from about 5 per cent as it recentred the business to focus on luxury jet sales, defence, and service and maintenance.

AtkinsRéalis said the U.S. is one of its core markets for engineering services and that it has taken the current trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S. into account in its strategic evaluations for ramping up its nuclear offering there. It said it intends to use its new technology centre in Richland, Wash., to further develop and apply “innovative nuclear and environmental cleanup technologies.”

Nuclear accounted for 12 per cent of revenues at AtkinsRéalis last year. The business is growing rapidly, however, and now employs about 4,000 people, up from 3,000 in 2022. Much of its recent hiring is in preparation for anticipated new reactor sales in Canada and abroad.

Last fall, the company won a joint contract to build two nuclear reactors in Romania, the first Candu reactors to be built in the world since 2007. The Canadian government will loan $3-billion to Romania’s nuclear power operator to finance the deal – funds that will be directed exclusively to Canadian providers of goods and services working on the project.

Executives with the engineering firm estimate that countries will need 1,000 new nuclear reactors by 2050. Assuming the company’s Candu solution nabs 5 per cent of that business (there are six large-scale reactor technologies globally, including Candu), they peg the market potential at $750-billion.

July 31, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, marketing | 1 Comment

Meet Charles Emond, the Canadian backing Sizewell C with £1.7bn

The chief executive of La Caisse, the second biggest infrastructure investor in
the world, is a fan of the UK and wants to put another £6bn into British
assets. “There’s always risk in a transaction,” says Charles Emond.

The chief executive of La Caisse is keen to stress that he and the other
equity investors named last week in the financing of the Sizewell C nuclear
power station project are not getting a completely free ride from British
taxpayers and electricity billpayers.

Billpayers will have £1 a month
added to their electricity bills from this autumn to help finance the
gigantic project. UK taxpayers will stand ready to foot the bill if the
construction costs rise above a certain point. But the equity investors
putting in £8.5 billion aren’t entirely free of exposure if things go
wrong, he says.

Times 27th July 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/energy/article/meet-charles-emond-the-canadian-backing-sizewell-c-with-17bn-t9hdhkspn

July 31, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Canada | 2 Comments

« Previous Entries Next Entries »