Canada’s Greens call on federal government to abandon nuclear and invest in renewables
Canada’s Bruce County Council postpones voting on nuclear waste bunker plan
 Bruce County defers vote to support the science behind a nuclear waste bunker, By Janice MacKay, Blackburn News, November 5, 2020 Bruce County Council has agreed to defer the vote on a motion made at today’s meeting to accept the Nuclear Waste Management’s proposed Deep Geologic Repository to store used nuclear fuel as a matter of settled science.Michelle Stein of the group “no DGR South Bruce” told council via skype Thursday during their meeting that the motion was premature when the science isn’t settled on the proposed nuclear fuel Repository……..
She says moving the waste could add increased risk as it is transported through local municipalities. She worries that since there is no nuclear fuel DGR operating in the world, developing one in South Bruce would be an experiment which could put local rivers and waterways at risk. She added that the nuclear fuel waste would also still need to be stored at the surface, as “the nuclear waste needs to go into cooling pools, and then it needs to be stored above ground for approximately 30 years before it’s even cool enough to be moved.” https://blackburnnews.com/uncategorized/2020/11/05/bruce-county-defers-vote-support-science-behind-nuclear-waste-bunker/ |
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While Canadian authorities fall for “New Small Nuclear” spin, U.S. consortium rips off Canada’s nuclear waste disaster
U.S. corporations profiting from major Canadian nuclear liability, https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-
expressed/2020/10/us-corporations-profiting-major-canadian-nuclear-liability Ole Hendrickson, October 30, 2020
The nearly 70-year history of the federal crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has left a $16 billion toxic legacy of shuttered reactors, polluted lakes and groundwater, contaminated soils, and hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of radioactive waste.
AECL’s 2018 annual report estimates its undiscounted waste and decommissioning liability at $15.9 billion as of March 31, 2018. Table 5.7 in Canada’s 2019 public accounts estimates AECL’s environmental liabilities at $1.05 billion and “asset retirement obligations” at $6.6 billion.
This $7.7 billion estimate of AECL’s total nuclear liability is heavily discounted. The accounting firm Deloitte does not recommend discounting for environmental liabilities and asset retirement obligations unless the amount of the liability and the amount and timing of cash payments are “reliably determinable.” As explained in a detailed report, neither is true for AECL’s liability.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper thought that the private sector might do a better job of addressing this massive liability than AECL itself. Just before losing power to the Liberals in the 2015 election, his government contracted an American-controlled consortium (creatively called the “Canadian National Energy Alliance”) to manage federal nuclear facilities and reduce the waste liability quickly and cheaply.
According to the main estimates, AECL’s expenditures grew from $326 million in 2014-15 (before the consortium assumed control) to $491 million in 2015-16, $784 million in 2016-17, $827 million in 2017-18 and $829 million in 2018-19. The 2020-21 main estimates for AECL are $1.2 billion.
AECL hands most of this money over to the consortium, whose current members are Texas-based Fluor and Jacobs, and SNC-Lavalin. AECL retains ownership of the waste. A 2017 special examination report of the Auditor General of Canada to AECL’s board of directors says that “approximately $866 million for contractual expenses was paid or payable by the Corporation in the 2016-17 fiscal year.”
Is this “Government-owned, contractor-operated” (GoCo) arrangement providing value for money?
The GoCo contract was supposed to have been reviewed after an initial six-year period. However, AECL — whose president is an American with past ties to consortium members — extended it to a full 10-year period in April 2020, 18 months before its September 2021 renewal date.
The centrepiece of the consortium’s approach — a million-cubic–metre radioactive waste mound on a hillside draining into the Ottawa River – was revealed in May 2016, shortly after the ink dried on the contract. Neither the public, nor Algonquin peoples on whose unceded territory this facility would be built, were consulted.
Technical problems and public opposition have put the “near surface disposal facility” — to be built at AECL’s Chalk River laboratories — years behind schedule. AECL waste management experts who left when the consortium took over have been highly critical, pointing out that an above-ground mound would not contain and isolate the types of radioactive waste that the consortium planned to put in it.
Chalk River, the focal point of Canadian nuclear research since the late 1940s, is where most of AECL’s radioactive waste legacy is found. But AECL also built reactors at four other sites in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. All have been shut down for decades — radioactive hulks, yet to be fully decommissioned.
AECL and its American-led consortium have announced quick and cheap plans for Manitoba and Ontario reactors: fill them up with blast furnace slag and concrete, and abandon them in place. Critics say these proposals are seriously flawed, noting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that “entombment” should only be considered in the event of a serious reactor accident.
Critics say that these sub-standard schemes would pollute major Canadian waterways and could expose workers and future generations to dangerous radiation levels.
The consortium is trying to salvage its Chalk River mound proposal with a promise to reduce the amount of radiation in the wastes it would house. Less radiation would leak into the Ottawa River.
However, management practices during Chalk River’s early years were poor, accidents were frequent and records were lost in a fire. Trying to separate out lower-activity from higher-activity wastes would involve considerable expense and high worker radiation exposures. And if strict limits on the mound’s radioactivity were adhered to, much of the federal waste liability would likely remain unaddressed.
Management of Canada’s radioactive waste by for-profit corporations, combined with a lack of government oversight, creates risks of delays, excessive radiation exposures to workers and the public, and squandering of tax dollars. Critics of AECL’s GoCo contract are asking the federal government to establish a publicly acceptable strategy for addressing its nuclear liability.
In a mission to Canada in late 2019, IAEA reviewers found virtually “no evidence … of a governmental policy or strategy related to radioactive waste management.” The government agreed to their recommendation that this gap be filled, assigning the task to Natural Resources Canada.
But Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan seems preoccupied with promotion of a new generation of mass-produced, “modular” nuclear reactors. Two consortium members — Fluor and SNC-Lavalin — are heavily invested in their own reactor designs. There are plans to build three new demonstration reactors at Chalk River, and talk of building as many as eight. One proposal has already reached the environmental assessment stage.
If the Liberal government caves into industry pressure to fund the building of these new reactors — instead of dealing responsibly with its existing waste liability — AECL’s $16 billion radioactive burden on Canadian taxpayers — and risks to workers and the public — will just keep growing.
Ole Hendrickson is a retired forest ecologist and a founding member of the Ottawa River Institute, a non-profit charitable organization based in the Ottawa Valley.
Suspected COVID-19 outbreak declared at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in Chalk River, Ontario.
The Renfrew County and District Health Unit (RCDHU) said it’s working closely with CNL to identify close contacts of the employees, who have been told to self-isolate at home and to get tested.
It also reminded those deemed high-risk contacts must self-isolate and monitor for symptoms for 14 days even if they’ve had a negative test, as it says COVID-19 could be incubating at the time of testing and that residents should not return to work, school or any public places during this time. …..
Three buildings at the Chalk River campus have been closed down for a thorough cleaning and 80 employees were sent home as a precaution. McGirl said, of those 80, two people have been told to self-isolate in addition to the two employees who tested positive. The names of all employees have been given to the RCDHU for contact tracing. …. https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/suspected-covid-19-outbreak-declared-at-canadian-nuclear-laboratories-in-chalk-river-ont-1.5164185
Nuclear industry stagnates, renewables thrive- small nuclear reactors will be a terrible mistake for Canada
 WORLD NUCLEAR INDUSTRY LOSES GROUND TO CHEAP RENEWABLES AS CANADA CONSIDERS SMALL MODULAR REACTORS, The Energy Mix SEPTEMBER 27, 2020 MITCHELL BEER @MITCHELLBEER
The world nuclear industry “continues to be in stasis,” with power plants shutting down at a faster rate in western Europe and the United States, the number of operating reactor units at a 30-year low, and the few new construction projects running into “catastrophic cost overruns and schedule slippages,” according to the latest edition of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), released last week. “Some 408 nuclear reactors were in operation in 31 countries as of July 2020, a decline of nine units from mid-2019 and 30 fewer than the 2002 peak of 438,” Reuters writes, citing the report. “The slow pace of new projects coming onstream also increased the overall age of the global fleet to around 31 years.” “Overall, in terms of the cost of power, new nuclear is clearly losing to wind and photovoltaics,” with the two renewable technologies now receiving about 10 times the investment, write Jungmin Kang, former chair of South Korea’s Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, South Korea, and Princeton University Professor Emeritus Frank von Hippel, in their foreword to the 361-page report. That meant new nuclear projects “were struggling to secure finance amid competition from renewables, with reported investment decisions for the construction of new nuclear plants at around US$31 billion in 2019,” Reuters says. One of the problems facing nuclear plants is that their high capital cost “requires that they operate almost continually to bring down the capital charge per kilowatt-hour,” Kang and von Hippel explain. “They must therefore compete directly with renewables most of the time or store their output to be used during cloudy, windless periods.” But “storage does not relieve the competition with wind and solar” since, “as renewables expand and storage costs come down, they too will have increasing incentives to store their excess output.” The report focuses in on COVID-19 as the first pandemic to have a significant, direct impact on the global nuclear industry, with large numbers of infections reported by the few operators that released precise figures. The WNISR says the pandemic has led to degraded safety and security and critical staffing issues at operating nuclear plants that also faced a tough economic hit when crashing electricity demand drove down power prices. In 2019, Russia had a hand in 15 of the 52 new nuclear construction projects around the world, and electricity generation from nuclear facilities grew 3.7%, with half of that total attributable to a 19% increase in China. But 33 of the 52 projects were behind schedule, and eight had been delayed by 10 years or more, “including two units that had construction starts 35 years ago and one unit that goes back 44 years,” WNISR notes. Of the 13 reactors scheduled for start-up last year, “only six made it,” including three in Russia, two in China, and one in South Korea—and no new nuclear facilities went online in the first half of 2020. Meanwhile, non-hydro renewables installed 184 gigawatts of new capacity in 2019, and “comparisons between nuclear and solar options show a large and widening gap,” the report states. “For example, a contract for 1.2 GW of solar power at US$24.20 per megawatt-hour, signed in 2017 and connected to the grid in 2019, is five to eight times cheaper than the international cost estimate for nuclear of US$118 to $192 per MWh.” [And that’s before the cost overruns that seems to be inevitable with most nuclear projects—Ed.] While “the biggest social argument for nuclear power plants is that their carbon emissions are low,” Kang and von Hippel write, that line of thought leads more toward refurbishing existing reactors—an area where the industry is also struggling. “In some major countries such as the United States, even 30-year-old plants whose capital costs have been paid off cannot compete economically with new renewable power plants, whose capital costs have been declining. The operating costs of nuclear plants are high in part because one to two hundred workers and guards are required onsite per reactor at all times in case of accident or terrorist attack.” And earlier this month, an incident in South Korea raised concerns about the reliability of nuclear generation in an era when climate change will make severe weather events more common and severe. The Kori nuclear plant was supplying 7% of the country’s electricity until it went into an automatic shutdown “because of typhoon impacts on their power transmission lines,” the two reviewers state. “Experts are concerned that, under different circumstances, the sudden shutdowns could destabilize South Korea’s grid and cause large-scale blackouts.” Paris-based consultant and lead WNISR author Mycle Schneider said the long-term headwinds facing nuclear development are even more daunting than the annual snapshot. Don’t just look at the photograph. Look at the movie,” he told The Energy Mix in an interview last week. “It takes an average of roughly 10 years to build a nuclear power plant from official construction start to grid connection,” even when a project isn’t delayed—which raises a particularly tough series of questions in the midst of a global climate emergency. “If I’m spending a dollar or a Euro or a yuan, I have to spend it in a way that allows me to reducogical renaissance through small modular reactors (SMRs). But “the industry is actually selling PowerPoint reactors, not detailed engineering, and it’s not the first time. They’ve been doing this for decades,” Schneider said. “Nobody, not even industry, pretends they can produce anything before 2030. That’s the earliest,” when 2050 is the latest possible deadline to decarbonize the entire global economy. Which means that, when it comes to SMRs, “it’s already very simple—it’s much too late, and we don’t know if it’ll work or what it’ll cost.”……….. “If I’m spending a dollar or a Euro or a yuan, I have to spend it in a way that allows me to reduce GHG emissions the most per dollar invested, the fastest.” Schneider said. But “if you look at nuclear power, it’s not only the most expensive, but it’s by far the slowest.” With even French nuclear giant EDF bidding against its own legacy technology to supply lower-cost solar projects, “do we really have to discuss what the future is or where this goes?” Schneider asked. “It’s obvious.” More recently, the nuclear industry has been promising a technological renaissance through small modular reactors (SMRs). But “the industry is actually selling PowerPoint reactors, not detailed engineering, and it’s not the first time. They’ve been doing this for decades,” Schneider said. “Nobody, not even industry, pretends they can produce anything before 2030. That’s the earliest,” when 2050 is the latest possible deadline to decarbonize the entire global economy. Which means that, when it comes to SMRs, “it’s already very simple—it’s much too late, and we don’t know if it’ll work or what it’ll cost.”……….. “Betting on nuclear as a climate solution is just sticking our heads in the sand because SMR technology is decades away, extremely expensive, and comes with a nasty pile of security and waste headaches,” Gibbons writes. “That our government would be this gullible is distressing, especially given the havoc already being wreaked by a changing climate.” Against concerns about intermittency of solar and wind, “it is fortunate that in Ontario we live beside a giant battery,” he adds. OCAA has long been an advocate for cross-border hydropower imports from Quebec to Ontario, and in the Sun, Gibbons notes that “Quebec has an enormous water power reservoir system that Hydro-Québec is keen to integrate with renewable sources for its out-of-province customers. When we have surplus solar and wind, Quebec stores water. When not, it produces hydropower for export.” The two provinces already “have the connections necessary to make this system work and can expand them, at a cost that looks like spare change next to what it costs to rebuild a nuclear reactor or get an SMR prototype built,” he adds. https://theenergymix.com/2020/09/27/world-nuclear-industry-loses-ground-to-cheap-renewables-as-canada-considers-small-modular-reactors/ |
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Canada’s government caught up in the Small Nuclear Reactor Ponzi Scheme
Why is the federal government funding new nuclear power reactors? rabble.ca Susan O’Donnell, October 15, 2020
Today, the government made its first SMR funding announcement: $20 million from ISED’s Strategic Innovation Fund for the company Terrestrial Energy to develop its prototype SMR in Ontario.
Anyone interested in evidence-based policy is wondering: Why are they doing this? There is no evidence that nuclear power will achieve carbon reduction targets, while there is considerable research indicating the contrary.
In fact, in today’s funding announcement, federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan confirmed that the new reactor will take more than a decade to develop and will contribute nothing to Canada’s 2030 target for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The same week as the throne speech, the release of the 2020 World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) confirmed, as did its previous reports, that developing new nuclear energy is too slow and uneconomical to address the climate crisis compared to deploying renewable energy technologies.
Last week, research based on data from 123 countries over a 25-year period made a similar finding. December 2019 research from Stanford professor Mark Z. Jacobson refutes claims that nuclear energy is zero-carbon. A November 2019 article in the American business magazine Forbes argues that building new nuclear reactors instead of investing in more climate-effective energy resources actually makes climate change worse.
SMRs, the nuclear reactors promoted by the federal government, are in particular over-hyped as a climate crisis solution. SMRs have been proposed as a solution for remote communities and mining sites currently relying on diesel fuel but new research has found the potential market is too small to be viable.
SMRs exist only as computer models and nobody knows for sure if they will work. Last month, the Canadian energy watchdog The Energy Mix interviewed WNISR lead author Mycle Schneider, who called SMRs “PowerPoint reactors, not detailed engineering.”
Given all the research evidence pointing away from funding nuclear energy in a climate action plan, why is the federal government proposing to do it?
In a webinar presentation earlier this year, the president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility Gordon Edwards put it bluntly: “The nuclear industry is desperate.”
Edwards believes the federal government’s push for new reactor development is coming from the nuclear industry. “If they can, the nuclear industry will convince governments to pour public money into this for whatever reason, by misrepresenting its advantages and minimizing or even ignoring its disadvantages.”……….
Nuclear reactor promoters are “barely keeping themselves alive,” said Edwards, and have realized for quite a while that “they are in trouble.”
The federal government created the nuclear industry in Canada and has funded it since the late 1940s. For more than 70 years Canada has been spending vast sums of public money to keep it going. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a Crown corporation with a mandate to promote and support nuclear science and technology and manage nuclear waste in Canada, received $826 million from the federal government in 2017-2018. Most of the public funds are turned over to a private-sector entity, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, whose majority partner is SNC Lavalin.
One description of the nuclear industry in Canada is that it can be understood as a kind of Ponzi scheme. In its current corporate plan, AECL listed a cost liability of almost $6.4 billion for decommissioning and waste management provision and $988 million for contaminated sites in 2017-18.
The industry needs new nuclear reactors as a replacement revenue stream. New reactors require capital investment but no banks or private investors are willing to invest due to the poor return on investment. Public funding is the only option to keep the industry alive and pay off its liabilities, and more public money is always required or the entire scheme will collapse. ……..
a revolving door shuttles senior government personnel involved in nuclear energy files to the CNA lobby. In one recent example, the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources who was responsible for nuclear policy is now a consultant for the CNA.
Former senior AECL executives and government nuclear energy staff are now establishing and managing various start-up nuclear companies actively seeking public funding from the federal government. And according to the throne speech, the money is available…….
The Canadian government’s plans to invest in nuclear energy contrast with the European Union’s proposed Green New Deal released in June this year that specifically excludes investment in nuclear energy because of its harmful environmental impacts. The decision followed sustainable finance guidelines also adopted this year and developed in a process that included environmental and other civil society groups as well as energy industry representatives……….https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2020/10/why-federal-government-funding-new-nuclear-power-reactors#.X4t38dAXWFc.twitter
Divisive nuclear waste programme in South Bruce, Ontario
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Proposed 1,500-acre site mapped out for Canadian nuclear waste storage in South Bruce, Ont. Scott Miller CTV News London Videographer @ScottMillerCTV October 15, 2020 TEESWATER, ONT. — We now know exactly where a proposed underground facility to house Canada’s nuclear waste will be, if it comes to fruition.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has secured all of the 1,500 acres of farmland they will need to permanently store over five million used nuclear fuel bundles that once powered Canada’s nuclear plants……… Securing all the land they need, means the NWMO can start borehole drilling in the spring, to ensure the geology of the region can support the underground project that is being designed to house the radioactive waste, forever. Similar work is underway in Ignace, the other Northern Ontario community still in the running to host the controversial project. To address community concerns, the NWMO says they’re committing to a program to compensate landowners if property values fall because of the project, if it’s built in South Bruce…….. The project has divided the small, rural community of roughly 6,000 residents. ……… The NWMO plans to pick South Bruce or Ignace to house Canada’s high level nuclear waste by 2023. https://london.ctvnews.ca/proposed-1-500-acre-site-mapped-out-for-canadian-nuclear-waste-storage-in-south-bruce-ont-1.5146504 |
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Small modular nuclear reactors create intensely radioactive wastes
A bridge to nowhere New Brunswick must reject small modular reactors, Beyond Nuclear International, By Gordon Edwards and Susan O’Donnell, 12 Oct, 20 ”……… In New Brunswick, the proposed new reactors (so-called “small modular nuclear reactors” or SMNRs) will create irradiated fuel even more intensely radioactive per kilogram than waste currently stored at NB Power’s Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. The non-fuel radioactive wastes will remain the responsibility of the government of New Brunswick, likely requiring the siting of a permanent radioactive waste repository somewhere in the province.
Interestingly, promoters of both new nuclear projects in New Brunswick – the ARC-100 reactor and the Moltex “Stable Salt Reactor” – claim their reactors will “burn up” these radioactive waste fuel bundles. They have even suggested that their prototype reactors offer a “solution” to Lepreau’s existing nuclear fuel waste problem. This is untrue. Radioactive left-over used fuel from the new reactors will still require safe storage for hundreds of thousands of years.
……… Until now, every effort to recycle and “burn up” used reactor fuel – in France, the UK, Russia and the US – has resulted in countless incidents of radioactive contamination of the local environment. In addition, none of these projects eliminated the need for permanent storage of the left-over long-lived radioactive byproducts, many of which cannot be “burned up.”…….
The nuclear waste problem is not going away. The recent letter from more than 100 groups across Canada, and the recent cancellation of the proposed nuclear waste dump in Ontario have shown that significant opposition to new nuclear energy generation exists. Because producing nuclear energy always means producing nuclear waste as well……. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2020/10/12/a-bridge-to-nowhere/,
3 Canadian provinces sucked in by propaganda from 3 Small Nuclear Reactor companies
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The two big-name companies that won’t be designing Ontario’s next nuclear reactor The province has passed over two major players on its shortlist for a small-modular-reactor design. Will that mean a more competitive process? TVO By John Michael McGrath – Oct 09, 2020 The Ontario government — along with the governments of New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and (probably) Alberta — wants to develop a new generation of nuclear reactors in Canada. This week, the provincially owned Ontario Power Generation announced it was taking the latest step toward that goal and would be working with three different companies to refine their engineering and design work so that eventually one can be selected for completion.
The three lucky companies are Terrestrial Energy (covered previously on TVO.org), GE Hitachi (with generations of nuclear experience in the United States), and X-energy. At least as notable, however, are two major omissions: NuScale and SNC-Lavalin, which makes the CANDU reactors that Ontario has relied on for decades……….. The problem for NuScale is that its design is meant to be packaged in clusters of up to 12, which is fine if you need 12 — but, right now, Ontario is looking to find one reactor that it could build reasonably quickly, to prove the design works and can be built economically, and then to reproduce it in other provinces, such as Saskatchewan……… In June of this year, however, SNC-Lavalin announced it was submitting a reactor design to the Canadian regulator in the 300-megawatt range — putting it on the larger end of the spectrum for something that’s still supposed to be “small” but is still smaller than traditional CANDU designs. Terrestrial Energy, by comparison, is offering a 195-megawatt design. Canada’s nuclear industry tried to market a 300-megawatt CANDU reactor in the 1980s (the CANDU 3) but never found a buyer. ……… handing the prize to SNC-Lavalin out of nostalgia for the CANDU design would have been a poor guarantee of value for electricity customers. https://www.tvo.org/article/the-two-big-name-companies-that-wont-be-designing-ontarios-next-nuclear-reactor |
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Canada to splurge $billions on non-existent small nuclear reactors, ineffective and no use against climate change
GIBBONS: Nuclear power no solution to climate change https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/gibbons-nuclear-power-no-solution-to-climate-change, Author of the article:, Jack Gibbons, Sep 25, 2020 At a time when action on climate change has never been more urgent, the federal Liberals want to throw billions of dollars at non-existent technology that will not make a difference for decades, if ever.
But that’s pretty much the way things have always been when it comes to federal spending on nuclear power: As long as the word “nuclear” is attached, we put common sense aside and fund projects that lead to one dead end after another.
More than $400 million for Advanced CANDU reactors that never got built? You bet. Another $600 million on the infamous Maple medical isotope reactor design, which proved unsafe to operate? No problem.
Now the industry’s latest pitch is Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and off we go on another wild goose chase with Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan once again promising billions for technology that is nowhere in sight, let alone use.
Meanwhile, costs for wind and solar have plunged to the point where these energy sources are now outcompeting even natural gas.
Nuclear, for its part, is fading fast. Due to its high costs and safety concerns, nuclear’s share of the world electricity market has cratered in the past two decades. More places are now retiring aging reactors than building them.
The nuclear industry loves to claim they are a critical climate change solution — except on a cost per tonne basis.
Nuclear is like buying a Mercedes to go to the corner store.
Ontario pays as little as two cents a kilowatt hour (kWh) for energy efficient improvements that could displace the need for nuclear while reducing greenhouse gas pollution.
Alberta is now paying around five cents per kWh for solar and four cents for wind.
Ontario Power Generation says it will need to be paid 16.5 cents per kWh for nuclear by 2025.
A whole lot has changed since the bad old days of Ontario’s Green Energy Act.
Yes, the sun doesn’t always shine or the wind blow. Which is why it is fortunate that in Ontario we live beside a giant battery.
Quebec has an enormous water-power reservoir system that Hydro Quebec is keen to integrate with renewable sources for its out-of-province customers.
When we have surplus solar and wind, Quebec stores water. When not, it produces hydro power for export.
We have the connections necessary to make this system work and can expand them at a cost that looks like spare change next to what it costs to rebuild a nuclear reactor or get an SMR prototype built.
The nuclear industry is grasping at straws. Its technology is obsolete, its promises unfulfilled and its costs ever rising.
Betting on nuclear as a climate solution is just sticking our heads in the sand because SMR technology is decades away, extremely expensive, and comes with a nasty pile of security and waste headaches. Yes. Virginia, SMRs still produce lots of highly radioactive waste and we still have no place to put the stuff.
That our government would be this gullible is distressing, especially given the havoc already being wreaked by a changing climate.
We have simple, affordable, reliable and truly clean answers to our climate problem at our fingertips.
Yet our government sits and waits for the nuclear industry to call with some good news. And the phone never rings.
— Jack Gibbons is chairman of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance
Small modular nuclear reactors for Canada? – useless, expensive, untested, and a wasteful distraction
NB Media Co-op 22nd Sept 2020,Premier Blaine Higgs has endorsed so-called “small modular nuclear reactors” or SMRs. SMRs represent an untested technology but what we know on the basis of technical characteristics and historical precedent is that they will be expensive and any electricity they generate will not be economical. The nuclear industry is pushing small reactors because large reactors are simply not economical. Constructing nuclear plants is just too expensive—as Ontario’s government found out after its call in 2008 for bids to build two more reactors at the Darlington site.https://nbmediacoop.org/2020/09/22/no-business-case-for-new-nuclear-reactors-in-new-brunswick/
Sierra Club Canada (accessed) 23rd Sept 2020, No plan that gets us to net zero in a reasonable time frame includes new nuclear reactors. Nuclear is far too slow and expensive to deal with the climate emergency. Just like fossil fuel energy, nuclear produces wastes that pose unacceptable health hazards and economic costs.David Suzuki on nuclear power as a climate change solution ”I want to puke.”
I want to puke. Because politicians love to say, “Oh, yeah, we care about this and boy, there’s [nuclear] technology just around the corner.”
Yeah, it’s taken a child [environmental activist Greta Thunberg] to finally have an impact that is more than all of us environmentalists put together over the past years.
The power of that child is that she’s got no vested interest in anything. She’s just saying: “Listen to the science because the scientists are telling us I have no future if we don’t take some drastic action.”
I want to puke’: David Suzuki reacts to O’Regan’s nuclear power endorsement
The Nature of Things host also addressed the climate crisis and youth’s role in climate change https://www.cbc.ca/radio/checkup/is-it-time-to-call-an-election-1.5728483/i-want-to-puke-david-suzuki-reacts-to-o-regan-s-nuclear-power-endorsement-1.5731819
CBC Radio Sep 21, 2020 David Suzuki spoke to Checkup host Ian Hanomansing about how to tackle climate change while in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and took questions from callers, in Sunday’s Ask Me Anything segment.
With the COVID-19 pandemic at the forefront of the news cycle, it might be easy to forget about the ongoing climate change crisis.
While managing the pandemic has become the first priority of the Canadian government and other governments around the world, climate change was a major talking point in the 2019 federal election campaign.
This summer, the last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic collapsed. South of the border, dry, hot weather conditions in states such as Oregon and Washington have led to historic wildfires.
David Suzuki is a scientist and environmental activist. He’s also the host of The Nature of Things on CBC television. Continue reading
The pandemic is a massive thrat – so is climate change
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The federal government shouldn’t feel it has to choose between addressing one crisis or the other, Aaron Wherry · CBC News · Sep 17, 2020 The profound and urgent threat of climate change still hangs over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government — quite literally this week, after smoke from the wildfires in California and Oregon spread across the continent, casting a dull haze across the skies.Questions are being asked now about how quickly or enthusiastically the Liberals should turn their focus back to that challenge. There is, after all, the small matter of an ongoing health emergency to tackle. But the unfolding climate emergency will not get any easier to deal with over time — and the Liberals might regret missing any available opportunities to make meaningful progress toward the mid-century goal of net-zero emissions. Although it’s not clear if the government’s actual plans for the next year have changed (or if it’s merely the official messaging about those plans that has been adjusted), it has shifted its publicly stated focus conspicuously to the immediate crisis posed by COVID-19. [Controlling the spread of COVID-19] is our government’s 100 per cent priority,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said Tuesday. “It is what we are overwhelmingly focused on.” “I think we recognize and have always recognized that dealing with the pandemic is job one,” Trudeau said Wednesday. Pandemic pessimismAfter the Liberals’ heady talk in late summer about a pivotal opportunity for ambitious change, that sounds like a course correction. If so, it’s a concession to simple reality. While a moment could be emerging when political circumstance and necessity align to create a rare opportunity for real change, it would be hard for any government to do much of anything if COVID-19 is allowed to run roughshod. COVID-19 is also (understandably) the central preoccupation of most Canadians: according to a survey by Abacus Data, 45 per cent of Canadians still believe the pandemic will get worse before it gets better. Parents nervously sending their children back to school might not be terribly interested right now in hearing about the better world that might emerge in the wake of COVID-19 — and they might be very inclined to punish any government that seems to take its eye off the immediate threat. As much as combating climate change and building a clean economy can still seem like optional pursuits — things that would be nice to have rather than necessary — Liberals might worry about seeming to have let “green” interests hijack the moment. Outside government, talk of a green recovery began soon after the pandemic’s arrival. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the idea as a passing fad; while Abacus polled fear about the pandemic, it also found that concern about climate change remains high, particularly among Liberal, NDP, Bloc Québécois and Green voters. While Gerald Butts, a former senior adviser to Trudeau, counselled progressive policy wonks on Monday to mind the real pandemic-related anxieties of voters, he also was part of a panel of experts that laid out a plan Wednesday calling for $55 billion in green spending over the next five years, largely focused on retrofitting buildings, expanding the use of zero-emission vehicles and accelerating the development of clean energy. But the task force also pointed out that such investments would be in line with plans being pursued by Germany, France and the United Kingdom. If Joe Biden is elected president of the United States in November, his plans could include as much as $2.7 trillion in green spending. It’s not an either-or choiceNot all of the problems COVID-19 has exposed or created can be solved by green spending — and it can’t be said that this government has demonstrated a peerless ability to manage multiple major priorities at once. But a government interested in the long-term goal of a clean economy should still be able to find opportunities to do that while simultaneously addressing the short-term needs of a battered economy. The Liberals themselves did that in May when they offered funding to clean up abandoned oil wells and asked large companies applying for pandemic-related loans to provide climate-risk disclosure. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that the Liberals already had a list of green things to do before the pandemic arrived. The platform that Trudeau ran on in the fall of 2019 promised new support for retrofits and zero-emission vehicles, a tax cut for companies that develop clean technology, climate change accountability legislation and new flood-mapping (not to mention that plan to plant two billion new trees). A global pandemic has complicated everyone’s plans for 2020. But Parliament should return next week with the ability to resume something resembling normal proceedings. And not even a global pandemic can fully excuse a government from doing important work. Climate change as an economic issueAs if to reassure the proponents of a green recovery that something is in the works, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson was one of the four ministers selected to stand behind Trudeau on Wednesday when this week’s cabinet retreat ended. But when Trudeau and Freeland did talk about a green agenda, it was in terms of jobs. “As we reflect on how to restart the economy, how to create good jobs for now and into the future, obviously the green sector and newer jobs and innovation and clean tech are going to be an essential part of building back better and building a stronger future,” Trudeau said. An emphasis on jobs could ground the green aspect of the government’s agenda in the most immediate and practical concerns of both nervous families and fretful economists. It also would serve as a reminder that a green recovery isn’t about hugging trees — it’s about the future welfare and prosperity of Canadians. A report released by the Institute for Climate Choices today makes the case that reducing emissions and growing the economy should not be treated as mutually exclusive goals — and that Canada’s work of building a clean economy has only begun. If a government wants to build long-term growth, a transition to a low-carbon economy seems like a decent place to start. No one can dispute the fact that other issues are now demanding the government’s attention: child care, long-term care, inequality, precarious work, a wounded economy and the ongoing challenge of living with the threat of COVID-19. No government would be easily forgiven for ignoring such things. But until Canada is on a clear path to net-zero emissions, nearly every federal government can be asked whether it has fully seized every chance to combat the climate crisis — a crisis that was worth worrying about before COVID-19 arrived and will still be worth worrying about long after the virus has faded. |
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Western Canadians do not want ”Small” nuclear reactors in Sakatchewan
Premier asks Trudeau to support nuclear reactors in upcoming throne speech, Yorkton This Week Michael Bramadat-Willcock – Local Journalism Initiative (Canada’s National Observer) / Yorkton This Week, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 Premier Scott Moe has sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau outlining Saskatchewan’s priorities ahead of the federal throne speech on Sept. 23. In it, he is asking Trudeau to support nuclear development in the province.
Moe wants the development of small modular nuclear reactors, also known as SMRs, in Saskatchewan to be part of Trudeau’s green agenda. ……..
In December, Moe signed a memorandum of understanding with the premiers of Ontario and New Brunswick to work together on further developing the nuclear industry. ……..
In his letter, the premier also focused on support for the oil and gas sectors, and pushed for pausing the carbon tax.
The Supreme Court of Canada will hear arguments on the federal carbon tax at the same time as the throne speech is delivered. …………
But western Canadians don’t all see eye-to-eye on the deployment of nuclear reactors, even small ones.
Committee for Future Generations outreach co-ordinator Candyce Paul of La Plonge at the English River First Nation earlier told Canada’s National Observer that while they haven’t been consulted on any aspects of the plan, all signs point to the north as a site for the reactors.
On Tuesday, Paul called it ironic that Moe spoke of western alienation from Ottawa when many in the north feel the same way about Regina.
“Trudeau, please represent the people of northern Saskatchewan because Scott Moe does not,” Paul said.
Paul’s group fights nuclear waste storage in Saskatchewan and was instrumental in stopping a proposal that considered Beauval, Pinehouse and Creighton as storage locations in 2011.
“When we informed the communities that they were looking at planning to bury nuclear waste up here in 2011, once they learned what that entailed, everybody said, ‘No way.’ Eighty per cent of the people in the north said, ‘No way, absolutely not.’ It didn’t matter if they worked for Cameco or the other mines. They said, if it comes here, we will not support it coming here,” Paul said in an interview last month. ………..
Paul said the intent behind using SMRs is anything but green and that the real goal is to prop up Saskatchewan’s ailing uranium industry and develop oilsands in the northwest.
“He’s put it right in the letter. His fear is they’re going to put out a green policy that will hurt the oil and gas sector,” Paul said.
“They’ve been looking for a way to bring the tar sands to northern Saskatchewan. We all know the mess that makes. Using small modular reactors is not lessening the carbon impact.”
She said in August that communities around Canada, and especially in the Far North, have long been pitched as sites for SMR development and nuclear waste storage, but have refused.
“None of our people are going to get trained for operating these. It supports people from other places. It doesn’t really support us,” Paul said.
Paul said on Tuesday that SMRs under 200 megawatts are currently excluded from environmental impact assessments, which means a lack of opportunity for public input.
She also said that interconnected water systems in the north would mean pollution would travel quickly into the ecosystem if there was a mishap at a reactor site.
Brooke Dobni, professor of strategy at the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business, told Canada’s National Observer in August that any development of small reactors would take a long time.
“It could be a good thing, but on the other hand, it might have some pitfalls. Those talks take years,” Dobni said.
He said nuclear reactors face bigger challenges that have to be addressed before they can go ahead, such as public support for protecting the environment, the high cost of building infrastructure, and containing nuclear fallout and radiation.
“Anything nuclear is 25 years out if you’re talking about small reactors, those kinds of things to power up the city,” Dobni said.
“That technology is a long ways away and a lot of it’s going to depend on public opinion.
“The court for that is the court of public opinion, whether or not people want that in their own backyard, and that’s the whole issue anywhere in the world.”
On Tuesday, Paul asked the federal government to invest in critical infrastructure instead.
“We need money spent in a serious way. Not on small modular reactors that could happen in 25 years. We need things now. To bring us up to the standards in our health system, we need health facilities. The public doesn’t want the government subsidizing industries that are about to go bust. It’s a waste of money,” Paul said.
“We have extreme needs that aren’t being met by industry and never will be met by industry. Trudeau, put the money where you want to make some real reconciliation happen.”https://www.yorktonthisweek.com/regional-news/premier-asks-trudeau-to-support-nuclear-reactors-in-upcoming-throne-speech-1.24204052
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