Green Party of Saskatchewan Says NO to Nukes!

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PRESS RELEASE – Green Party of Saskatchewan Says NO to Nukes!

SASKATOON, SK - September 1, 2006 - The Green party of Saskatchewan welcomes the news that Elizabeth May, formerly with the Sierra Club of Canada, has been elected Leader of the Green Party of Canada. Her long standing activism in the holistic environmental movement gives new momentum to the nuclear position of the Green Party of Saskatchewan. It strongly opposes uranium mining and other developments of the nuclear industry currently being proposed in Saskatchewan.

Party members voiced grave concerns at the high-pressured, cavalier approach being used by the industry, Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA), Saskatchewan Rural Municipalities Association, the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce and the University of Regina as they push for the expansion of uranium mining in Saskatchewan’s north and the possibility of building a uranium conversion plant at North Battleford, SK to produce fuel for nuclear energy plants.

These organizations have continued to preach to the converted about how clean and safe nuclear power is! It is, in fact, the most dangerous element on the planet. Once having contaminated the water or soil in and around uranium mines and nuclear facilities, the contamination lasts for millions of years, killing on a daily basis, irreversible and unforgiving! Clean up costs of these contaminated sites falls to the Canadian taxpayers.

Proponents such as the Canadian Nuclear Association and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited maintain that because nuclear reactors don’t cause acid rain or contribute to greenhouse gases, nuclear is the most environmentally friendly of energy sources. What they don’t mention is that every step of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium mining to the decommissioning of reactors, produces radioactive pollutants. There is no proven method of safe disposal of the highly radioactive nuclear waste, including underground storage which requires, at great expense to taxpayers, constant tests and monitoring forever. Consequently, after it has been removed from the reactor, this extraordinarily dangerous used fuel remains in temporary storage beside power stations scattered around the planet for decades, vulnerable to terrorist attack for millennia. Meanwhile depleted uranium, a residue from the enrichment process is planted into bullets or bombs which ravages human tissue in an unprecedented manner.

The Green Party of Saskatchewan strongly supports sustainable solutions to climate change initially through serious conservation programs to save on the amount of energy we use, followed by rigorous research and development of alternative energy sources currently available such as solar, geothermal, and wind energy.

For more information, please contact:

Neil Sinclair, Interim Leader
Green Party of Saskatchewan
Tel. (306) 374-3401
Email: neil@link.ca