Ontario pouring good money after bad in its failing nuclear dream
Ontario’s misguided love affair with nuclear power, The Star, 31 May 16 Instead of seeing principled leadership in Ontario, we are seeing the opposite – a stealthy effort to keep an old and uneconomic nuclear dinosaur on life support. By JACK GIBBONS
Construction on Pickering began in the 1960s and its first reactors were powered up in 1971 – the same year Led Zepplin released Stairway to Heaven. Despite 45 years of operation, its owner, Ontario Power Generation (OPG), only recently decided to see if the millions of people living around the plant are aware of its plans for what they should do in the event of an emergency at the plant. It quickly found out that a) local residents had no clue what they were supposed to do; and b) they weren’t buying OPG’s plan to “shelter in place” (stay put) during a high-level emergency.
No other nuclear plant in North America even comes close to having as many people on its doorstep as the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. …….
Pickering is already sucking up $900 million per year in out-of-market subsidies for its power. As one of the highest-cost nuclear plants on the continent, keeping Pickering running means higher electricity rates.
And it’s not like we need its power: In 2015, Ontario exported more power than Pickering produced – and lost money doing it.
So why after promising to close Pickering by 2020 at the latest are the Liberals now working to keep it limping along? It could be like your Buick: You bit the bullet on that costly new transmission and just can’t admit it was a big mistake. Repairs to Pickering’s reactors in the late 1990s went massively over budget and were years late in being completed.
The truth is, however, that “fixing” Pickering is like fixing your aging Buick – it is an ongoing and costly battle. One reactor has recently been offline for months for repairs and breakdowns and “incidents” are regular occurrences at North America’s fourth oldest nuclear station. Pickering was the site of the worst loss of coolant accident at a Canadian reactor, during which workers had to siphon heavy water off the floor of the containment building and back into the reactor in 1984.
Designed in the 1950s and ‘60s, Pickering is an unusual nuclear facility: It has multiple reactors sharing a single containment building and has no secondary fast shutdown system. Separate containment for individual reactors and redundant fast shutdown systems have been standard issue for most nuclear plants for years.
The real reason the government wants to keep Pickering going is that our energy planners remain some of the last people on the planet who still believe that nuclear energy is the best way to meet our need for a brightly lit home or a cold drink. Only France outranks us for dependence on nuclear energy……
The problem is, we are all going to pay the price for their love affair with this outdated technology. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2016/05/30/ontarios-misguided-love-affair-with-nuclear-power.html
Canada’s wildfires – surrounding a radioactive trash site
The nuclear waste site at the heart of Canada’s wildfires http://www.euronews.com/2016/05/18/the-nuclear-waste-site-at-the-heart-of-canadas-wildfires/#.V0M0ugThEm0.twitterJust south of the Canadian city of Fort McMurray, in an area partly ravaged by flames, sits a nuclear waste site.
Situated at the extreme north of the Beacon Hill landfill tip, it contains some 42,500 m3 of radioactive minerals, including uranium and cesium.
But does it pose a threat to society today? According to information gained by euronews reporter Renaud Gardette, the site lies in the middle of the huge wildfires, blazing uncontrollably since May 1.
Why was the landfill created?
To understand the origins of the landfill site, we must first go back to 1982 when Canada launched an extensive exploration and containment of low-level radioactive land programme all over the territory. It was piloted by the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office (LLRWMO).
In Fort McMurray, radioactive minerals were regularly discharged and used along the Northern Transportation Road. Built in the 1930s, the thoroughfare was initially used to transport uranium from the Port Radium mine (Northwest Territories) to Fort McMurray. From there, uranium was also transported by train to Port Hope, Ontario.
The Port Radium mine closed in 1960. Thefts and pillages occurred along the road and that is where the contamination is most visible.
The LLRWMO detected more radioactive sites around Fort McMurray. Work began in 1992 and, up to 2003, 42,500m3 of waste were sent to a specially-engineered landfill with a double layer of clay, several management systems, protection and monitoring, as well as a layer of earth and grass.
The site is monitored annually by the LLRWMO.
Does the site really exist?
The site’s existence is confirmed in several reports, including the Inventory of Radioactive Waste in Canada, published in 2012 by the LLRWMO.
What if?
Several questions have arisen. Was the site burnt in the wildfires? Have radioactive particles been emitted into the atmosphere? What is the risk to the environment?
For the moment, no specific warning has been triggered.
The response from the Canadian authorities
(Translated from French)
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories and our Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office are responsible for managing historic low-intensity radioactive waste located in the Beacon Hill dump at Fort McMurray. The site is at the north end of the Beacon Hill landfill site, which itself is south of the city of Fort McMurray and west of Highway 63. The approximate coordinates are: 56 degrees 39 ’10 “ N, 111 degrees 20 ’56 “W.
- CNL manages these sites on behalf of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, the federal corporation that is ultimately responsible for the safe management of historic low-intensity radioactive waste.
- The low-intensity waste at Beacon Hill consists of uranium ore residue, mixed with soil and placed in isolation (in a separate cell), which is covered with a thick layer of low-permeability soil, then another, dense layer of clean earth. In total, there are at least 45 centimetres of clean soil over the contaminated soil.
- According to the information available, it appears that the site was affected by the fires. That said, this does not pose any immediate risk to the health and safety of people and the environment. There are also no concerns about the physical integrity of the cell.
- Given the composition of the contaminated soil, that is to say, ore residue mixed with earth, there is no risk that it will catch fire. In a similar way to a field or garden, fire can ignite the grass, but the earth itself does not catch fire.
- We continue to monitor the situation closely.
Canadian nuclear company SNC-Lavalin Named In Panama Papers
The numerous allegations against SNC-Lavalin and its subsidiaries helped Canada dominate a World Bank blacklist of corrupt companies.
Canadian companies represented 117 of the 600 firms on the list in 2013, that were banned from doing business with the World Bank. Most of them were SNC subsidiaries.
The federal Liberal government last year allowed SNC-Lavalin to continue bidding on government contracts while the criminal charges against it are resolved.
Under new procurement rules brought in by the previous Conservative government last year, companies convicted of corruption are banned for 10 years from bidding on government contracts.
SNC-Lavalin Named In Panama Papers http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/05/18/snc-lavalin-panama-papers_n_10031200.html The Huffington Post Canada | By Daniel Tencer 05/19/2016 Canadian construction and engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, already embroiled in corruption scandals in numerous countries around the world, can add one more black mark to its reputation: It has been named in the Panama Papers leak of offshore accounts, according to news reports.
Among the 11.5 million files in the Panama Papers were documents showing SNC-Lavalin paid a company in the Caribbean nearly $22 million to help secure contracts in Algeria, according to an investigation by the CBC and The Toronto Star.
The two news outlets are the Canadian partners of the consortium that has released the Panama Papers.
The CBC reports that the setup described in the Panama Papers is similar to how SNC-Lavalin operated in Libya, where the company has been accused of bribery.
The RCMP laid charges against SNC-Lavalin last year, alleging the company offered some $47 million in bribes to Libyan officials in the hopes of securing work there between 2001 and 2011.
It also alleged the company committed fraud worth $130 million in its dealings in Libya for paying bribes so it could secure contracts for infrastructure projects there.
A former SNC vice-president, Riadh Ben Aissa, was convicted of bribery in a Swiss court in relation to the Libyan allegations. Continue reading
Canadian wildfires – huge release of carbon to the atmosphere
The Fort McMurray fire’s stunning pulse of carbon to the atmosphere, WP By Chris Mooney May 20 The Fort McMurray wildfire, which seems likely to be the costliest disaster in Canada’s history, continues to grow. According to the government of Alberta, as of Friday morning it had burned over 500,000 hectares of land, or more than 1.2 million acres…..
Steve Taylor, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service said the fire already ranks in the top six or seven largest fires seen in Canada in the satellite era, starting in 1970, when observations became most reliable. Especially since this is occurring in May, early in the wildfire season, that’s pretty incredible.
And so is another detail about this fire — the amount of carbon that it is apparently pouring into the atmosphere.
Taylor’s colleague, Werner Kurz, is a senior research scientist at the Canadian Forest Service and heads its carbon accounting team. He said he generally estimates that for every hectare of forest land consumed in a fire like this one, about 170 tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions — so dubbed because they actually include not only carbon dioxide but also methane and nitrous oxide, two other greenhouse gases — head into the atmosphere.
That would mean that this single fire has contributed — for a rough estimate — some 85 million tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions.
The fire has also, at least temporarily, worsened the entire nation of Canada’s emissions of carbon dioxide…….
the burning of northern forests can also leave behind a dark upper surface layer that absorbs sunlight, heats up and then thaws permafrost, or frozen soil, beneath the surface. Fort McMurray is located in a zone of Canada that’s still far enough south to see only “isolated patches” of permafrost beneath the ground — but if any of that thaws in the wake of this fire, it will emit carbon into the atmosphere. And that might not get put back in the ground again, at least not on any time frame relevant to the immediate future.
The threat of megafires to permafrost becomes more and more of an issue as you travel farther north in Canada, Alaska and Siberia, which is why northern wildfires can be such a major problem — especially if they are worsening, as appears to be the case…….https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/05/20/the-fort-mcmurray-fires-stunning-pulse-of-carbon-to-the-atmosphere/
Climate change exacerbates wildfires – Canada’s tragedy
As Alberta wildfire rages, thousands who fled must wait weeks to go home
The more than 88,000 Fort McMurray residents evacuated during the wildfire must wait until June to begin a phased re-entry plan, says Alberta premier, Guardian, Ashifa Kassam , 19 May 16, The wildfire in northern Alberta continues to rage out of control, growing to more than 423,000 hectares as officials said it would be at least another two weeks before the tens of thousands of evacuated Fort McMurray residents would be allowed to return to the city.
Relief – in the form of cooler weather and slight precipitation – may be on the way for fire crews, Rachel Notley, the Alberta premier, said on Wednesday. “So of course we’re all crossing our fingers that that happens.”
While the fire had expanded by 68,000 hectares in the past day, making it more than six times the size of Toronto, much of the fire’s growth has been confined to remote forested areas.
Earlier this week, shifting winds forced the evacuation of 8,000 non-essential staff from more than a dozen camps and sites north of Fort McMurray. Hours later, the fire consumed an oil sands camp belonging to Horizon North Logistics, and authorities warned the fire was fast approaching the Syncrude and Suncor Energyfacilities in the area.
On Wednesday the government said firefighters had been able to hold off the fire from the oil sands facilities. “We were very successful in some of the areas there to the north, so the fire hasn’t encroached as far as we had first feared,” said Chad Morrison, Alberta’s manager of wildfire prevention. “It was very unfortunate that we lost one lodge and that’s obviously due to the extreme fire behaviour.”
In early May, the fire transformed from one that was largely in controlto a raging wildfire that breached the city of Fort McMurray. Amid heavy smoke and flames that licked city streets, more than 88,000 residents were ordered evacuated.
The Alberta premier said that residents would be able to return to the city beginning 1 June, in a phased re-entry plan that would see residents in the least-damaged areas be allowed in first. By 4 June, residents of neighbourhoods like Beacon Hill, where the fire destroyed an estimated 70% of homes, will be allowed to return.
The dates are tentative, stressed Notley, and contingent on the fire’s behaviour in the coming weeks. “This is our best guess,” she said. “If conditions change as they did just this week, the voluntary re-entry may begin later than 1 June.”…….
Speaking in Ottawa on Wednesday, Don Forgeron, the chief executive of the Insurance Bureau of Canada said the fire will likely be the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history, estimating that the cost to insurers would land somewhere between C$3 billion and C$9 billion.
The world, he said, was now in a new era in which disasters such as fires and floods were happening more often. He pointed to a recent report by Canada’s parliamentary budget officer predicting that disasters linked to climate change could cost the government an average of C$902m a year over the next five years. “Climate change … has moved from future threat to present danger,” Forgeron said. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/18/alberta-wildfires-fort-mcmurray-residents-must-wait-to-return-canada
Growing opposition in both Canada and USA to nuclear waste dumping near the Great Lakes
Opposition to the project, though, has swelled. More than 180 county boards, city councils and other local elected bodies near the Great Lakes in both countries have passed proclamations urging a veto of the plan.
Plan to store nuclear waste near Great Lakes proves radioactive, WP By Steve Friess May 16 KINCARDINE, Ontario — If there was an off-key moment during the otherwise flawlessly executed trip to the U.S. Capitol this spring by the new Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, it might have come when he was cornered by Rep. Debbie Dingell.
“We never want to see nuclear waste in the Great Lakes,” the freshman Democrat from Michigan sternly told Trudeau during a visit to the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Continue reading
Indigenous residents of Yellowknif, Canada, send Terrestrial Energy nuclear salesmen packing
‘Go home!’ N.W.T. residents tell Ontario nuclear power advocate, Presentation met with hostile responses Thursday night in Yellowknife By Mitch Wiles, CBC News May 13, 2016 A Thursday evening forum in Yellowknife about bringing nuclear energy to Canada’s North quickly turned hostile, with local aboriginal people telling one presenter to “Go home!”
Robin Rickman of Oakville, Ont.-based Terrestrial Energy attempted to present a new design of a nuclear reactor to a packed room of N.W.T. residents interested in lowering the cost of energy, but he was repeatedly shouted down.
“Where are the chiefs?” yelled Dehcho region resident Roxanne Landry. “You are not welcome on Dene land!”……
Frame Lake MLA Kevin O’Reilly was at the presentation and says too many questions were left unanswered. “There are still lots of issues of what do you do with the waste,” he said. “It’s nowhere near a feasibility stage. None of these facilities have been built anywhere. I don’t know where the financing would come from. Lots of problems.”
O’Reilly said he doubted whether the project could be safely regulated.That concern was echoed by Landry. She pointed to the contaminated Giant Mine site, just outside of Yellowknife, as a hard lesson in putting too much trust in the industry or regulators……..http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/go-home-nwt-resident-ontario-nuclear-power-advocate-1.3581509
Canadian wildfire approaches oil sands project
Canada wildfire explodes in size, approaches oil sands project, The Age, May 8, 2016 Rod Nickel Gregoire Lake, Alberta: A raging Canadian wildfire grew explosively on Saturday as hot, dry winds pushed the blaze across the energy heartland of Alberta and threatened to burn close to an oil sands project.
The fire that has already prompted the evacuation of all 88,000 people who lived in the city of Fort McMurray was set to double in size on Saturday, the seventh day of what is expected to be the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s history.
Provincial officials praised evacuees for their patience and, in a sign of how long the crisis could drag on, said the cities of Calgary and Edmonton, many hundreds of kilometres to the south, were the best place to receive longer-term support such as medical care and emergency payments.
Firefighting officials said the inferno, propelled north-east towards the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan by high winds and fuelled by tinder-dry forests, was set to double in size to 300,000 hectares by the end of Saturday.
Fort McMurray is the centre of Canada’s oil sands region. About half of the nation’s crude output from the sands, or one million barrels per day, had been taken offline as of Friday, according to a Reuters estimate………
At least 10 oil sands operators have cut production due to evacuations and other emergency measures.
Syncrude oil sands project said it would shut down its northern Alberta operation and remove all personnel from the site due to smoke. There was no imminent threat from the fire….
Mr Morrison told a briefing that firefighters started tackling the fire as soon as it was spotted south-west of the city last Sunday. The blaze is now expected to reach the border with Saskatchewan, some 80 kilometres away, by the end of the day…….
Entire neighbourhoods were reduced to ruins, but most evacuees fled without knowing the fate of their own homes. The majority got away with few possessions, some forced to leave pets behind……http://www.theage.com.au/world/canada-wildfire-explodes-in-size-approaches-oil-sands-project-20160508-gop2yx.html
Canada’s wildfire horror – Climate Change is part of the cause
Canada’s horror wildfire – Climate Change is a contributing cause
Impressive solar panel array on Port Alberni hospital, Vancouver Island, Canada
Port Alberni hospital has Vancouver Island’s largest array of solar power Solar power could help with high hydro rates during peak hours on hot days By Liam Britten, CBC News Apr 23, 2016
Who loves the sun? — turns out West Coast General Hospital in Port Alberni does. That building is home to 400 solar panels — the largest power-generating array on Vancouver Island, in fact.
The panels will be doing their work in the weeks and months ahead to see how much money Island Health Authority can save by using the power of the sun.
- Thompson Rivers University puts energy into solar powered walkway
- Vancouver roofing company starts offering solar panel installation
- Nelson’s ‘community solar garden’ starts leasing panels
“When it’s really hot and sunny and we’re using a lot of power to keep the hospital cool, the rates get very high with BC Hydro,” Deanna Fourt, director of energy efficiency and conservation with Island Health Authority told All Points West host Robyn Burns.
“So it’s going to work very nicely with the solar. This is what we’re thinking, because it’s going to be offsetting those really high-rate days or high-rate times.”……..http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-island-solar-power-1.3550022
Transition to renewable energy sector: the goal of these North American Oil and Gas Workers
Amid Price Plunge, North American Oil and Gas Workers Seek Transition to Renewable Sector TruthOut, 03 April 2016 00:00By Candice Bernd, “…….after years of working in an industry that one top climate scientist has called “the biggest carbon bomb on the planet,” Hildebrand came to realize that he was not the only oil worker in Alberta who felt “guilty about developing the infrastructure that is creating climate change.”
Opportunity in the Oil Plunge
Last spring, when oil prices began to fall, Hildebrand banded together with like-minded coworkers and began building an oil and gas worker-led nonprofit called “Iron & Earth,” which officially launched this month during a press conference in Edmonton. Through the nonprofit, the oil sands workers hope to help others who have been laid off diversify their skill sets and facilitate the necessary training to transition them to the renewable energy sector. They also want to help incorporate renewable energy projects into oil sands workers’ current scope of work…….
“We are a group of workers who not only want to diversify our work scope based on job need, but also based on a values-based mission, to ensure that we’re creating and building a future that’s going to be sustainable,” Hildebrand told Truthout. “The drop in oil prices was certainly a catalyst to help amplify these conversations, and created the pressure to … create a catch-all organization that’s going to make projects happen and get workers’ hands on some renewable energy projects.”
Moreover, not every oil worker with experience in Alberta’s oil sands needs to retrain in order to transition to the renewable sector, according to Hildebrand, who says a lot of trades are “directly transferable.” Hildebrand has worked on several renewable energy projects himself, including a biomass plant and the wind farm weather station that inspired him during his apprenticeship. “I didn’t require any retraining for that. All I required was the blueprints and the steel, and the facility to build it,” he said.
From Oil Sands to “Solar Skills”
Iron & Earth’s first project is its “Solar Skills” campaign to facilitate the retraining of 1,000 laid-off electricians from Alberta’s oil industry, to help build 100 solar installations on public buildings throughout the province beginning this fall. In the future, as the group takes on different campaigns focused on geothermal, biomass, biofuel and wind energy, they hope to attract other kinds of oil and gas workers, such as pipefitters and iron workers, as well as workers from other building trades, to retrain in those sectors………http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35477-amid-price-plunge-north-american-oil-and-gas-workers-seek-transition-to-renewable-sector
“Clean coal” technology is not working
Technology to Make Clean Energy From Coal Is Stumbling in Practice, NYT, By IAN AUSTEN MARCH 29, 2016 OTTAWA — An electrical plant on the Saskatchewan prairie was the great hope for industries that burn coal.
In the first large-scale project of its kind, the plant was equipped with a technology that promised to pluck carbon out of the utility’s exhaust and bury it underground, transforming coal into a cleaner power source. In the months after opening, the utility and the provincial government declared the project an unqualified success.
But the $1.1 billion project is now looking like a green dream.
Known as SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3, the project has been plagued by multiple shutdowns, has fallen way short of its emissions targets, and faces an unresolved problem with its core technology. The costs, too, have soared, requiring tens of millions of dollars in new equipment and repairs.
“At the outset, its economics were dubious,” said Cathy Sproule, a member of Saskatchewan’s legislature who released confidential internal documents about the project. “Now they’re a disaster.”……….http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/energy-environment/technology-to-make-clean-energy-from-coal-is-stumbling-in-practice.html?_r=0
Closing Canada’s Pickering nuclear station will result in jobs, savings and safety
Shuttering Pickering = jobs, savings and safety
Closing the Pickering Nuclear Station when its license expires in 2018 and getting to work on dismantling the plant immediately will be safer, create more jobs between now and 2030, and save hundreds of millions of dollars.
That’s the finding of a new report commissioned by Ontario Clean Air Alliance Research from energy consultants Torrie Smith and Associates. Torrie Smith compared Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG’s) plan of leaving the plant untouched for 30 years before starting decommissioning to the internationally preferred approach of immediate decommissioning.
They found that getting to work immediately would create 16,000 person years of employment, save $800 million to $1.2 billion on decommissioning costs, and ensure a smoother transition for workers and the local economy.
In fact, Torrie Smith points out that the only reason to leave Canada’s oldest nuclear plant sitting idle on the Pickering waterfront for the next 30+ years is money. While there is enough money in OPG’s Decommissioning Fund to fully cover the costs of decommissioning Pickering today, OPG would prefer to wait and let investment returns over the next three decades do the heavy financial lifting.
From a safety perspective, a 30-year wait simply means that Pickering’s components and structures will continue to age and deteriorate, actually raising risks while producing more low-level radioactive waste. A 30-year delay will have little impact on levels of radioactivity in the plant or affect how the dismantling work is approached, which is why the International Atomic Energy Agency states that “the preferred decommissioning strategy shall be immediate dismantling.”
The Pickering Nuclear Station is North America’s 4th oldest and one of the largest nuclear stations on the continent. We should not leave this legacy of a bygone era to future generations to deal with. Instead, we should seize the opportunity to develop expertise in a growing new industry – nuclear decommissioning.
Given that Canada’s nuclear industry hasn’t sold a new reactor in 30 years, the future of our nuclear industry clearly lies in providing the expertise to safely decommission old nuclear facilities – including other aging CANDU reactors in Canada and around the world.
Please send Premier Wynne a message here asking her to order OPG to develop an immediate decommissioning plan for Pickering and to close this dinosaur by 2018 (when its license expires) at the latest.
Canadian activists push for a nuclear- free world, despite Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion
Activists want Canada to push for nuclear-free world despite Dion’s reticence http://www.metronews.ca/news/canada/2016/03/29/activists-want-canada-to-push-for-nuclear-free-world-despite-dion-s-reticence.html By: Mike Blanchfield The Canadian Press Mar 30 2016
OTTAWA — Anti-nuclear campaigners who want Canada to push for a global ban on nuclear weapons are concerned that Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion is showing a definite lack of enthusiasm for that goal.
Dion said in a speech earlier this month that the current global security environment is simply not conducive to a ban on nuclear weapons because some states just won’t relinquish them.
Cesar Jaramillo, executive director of the peace group Project Ploughshares, says there’s never a perfect time to push for such a ban and the time to start is now.
Nuclear disarmament and security will be front and centre later this week as U.S. President Barack Obama hosts his final Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is to attend the two-day meeting, which is focused on curbing nuclear terrorism by cracking down on the trafficking of materials needed to build such a weapon.
Obama announced the initiative in a landmark speech in Prague in 2009, in which he expressed his aspiration for a nuclear-free world, even if it didn’t come in his lifetime.
Earlier this month, Dion said in a speech in Geneva that any negotiations to ban nuclear weapons would have to include all countries that possess them. “Without the participation of the countries possessing nuclear weapons, a ban would not bring us any closer to our shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons,” Dion said on March 2. “Indeed, premature action risks undermining international stability by creating a false sense of security, without any reliable underpinnings.”
Dion’s remarks largely flew under the radar but anti-nuclear activists took note.
“The reality is that there will never be ideal international security conditions for nuclear disarmament,” Jarmillo said Monday. “Nuclear abolition will be a complex, multifaceted undertaking that will need to coexist with international security crises of varying gravity,” he added. “Nuclear disarmament measures must be started, implemented and concluded in geopolitical conditions that are predictably less than perfect.”
Paul Meyer, a retired diplomat who once served as Canada’s disarmament ambassador, said Dion should be pushing harder for a progress on broader disarmament in spite of the geopolitical obstacles. He cited Canada’s leadership in championing the anti-landmine treaty in the 1990s.
“Minister Dion should recall that if Canada had only been willing to consider ‘incremental’ progress on the disarmament of landmines back in 1997 we would still be in a world awash with these weapons,” Meyer wrote in a recent column in Ottawa’s Embassy newsweekly.
This week’s Washington summit on curbing the trafficking of nuclear components comes amid periodic reports of the theft of radioactive material that could be used to build a so-called “dirty bomb.”
Jaramillo said preventing nuclear terrorism is a worthy and urgent objective.
“But it cannot be understood in isolation from the broader multilateral dynamics related to nuclear disarmament and the slow pace of progress toward that goal,” he added. “It is still early in the Liberal government and it may still be formulating its stand on nuclear abolition. So far, however, there has been little change from the Conservative government concerning Canada’s core positions in this regard.”
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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