Nuclear power plants will mortgage all future generations, s

[Oscar]

Nuclear power plants will mortgage all future generations, says expert

[translated from the French

By Brigitte Trahan, Le Nouvelliste, August 11 2023

[ https://tinyurl.com/ys6pde2h ]

Gordon Edwards' phone is ringing off the hook. In between calls from journalists across Canada, he readily agrees to a lengthy interview about the idea of Hydro-Québec’s new CEO, Michael Sabia, to conduct a study to restart the Gentilly-2 nuclear power plant.

There's a lot going on in Canada's nuclear industry these days. Between the [breaking] news about Gentilly-2, and the public hearing held in Ottawa on Thursday on the project to dump a million cubic metres of radioactive and non-radioactive waste [in a gigantic mound] one kilometer from the Ottawa River, as well as the [billion dollar] radioactive contamination scandal in Port Hope, the President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility is in great demand and his days are full.

Despite his 83 years, the activist is in splendid form, and is doing everything in his power to continue his fight against nuclear power, which began in 1974.

Gentilly-2 is an issue with which he is very familiar, having supported the efforts of regional environmental groups, including le Mouvement vert de la Mauricie, which [successfully] called for the closure of the Bécancour nuclear power plant [Gentilly-2] in 2012.

Penalizing future generations

"People promote nuclear energy without seeing it as different from other forms of energy. But it's not just another energy technology. The main product of a nuclear reactor is not electricity, but high-level [radioactive] waste, including plutonium, which remains in the environment for a very long time - hundreds of thousands, even millions of years - while the electricity produced is only available for a few decades. You only have a brief production of energy, but future generations will have to deal with the waste forever," he sums up.

"You only have a brief production of energy, but future generations are going to be grappling with waste forever." - Gordon Edwards

From power plants to bombs

"Radioactive waste is not just chemical compounds that can be incinerated. It's [made up of unstable] atoms, elements, and you can't destroy them. Nobody can destroy radioactive waste or neutralize it", continues Edwards. This waste won't cause the end of the world, but it can give rise to many serious illnesses, including cancer.

"We're creating something that doesn't exist in nature.” - Gordon Edwards

However, the biggest danger to the planet, he points out, is one particular byproduct produced by the power plants – plutonium, because it is used to make nuclear weapons.

Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, he says. "We're creating something that doesn't exist in nature, because we cannot extract plutonium from the ground. Humans make it in nuclear reactors," he explains.

One of the most expensive options

In response to the economic argument that nuclear power is necessary to meet the population's energy needs, Gordon Edwards points out that "nuclear power is one of the most expensive options". By opting for it, "you're going to bankrupt yourself", he assures us. Hydro-Québec, if it comes back to nuclear, is "betting on the wrong horse", he believes.

"Nuclear power is one of the most expensive options.” - Gordon Edwards

According to him, serious studies show that wind and solar power "are three to four times less expensive than nuclear power, and it takes three to four times less time to deploy them."

Gordon Edwards claims that the Gentilly-2 plant "never made financial sense".

Grid stability?

The argument that the plant brought stability to the power grid is not valid, he says. "Hydro-Quebec never raised that argument before. They had to invent a reason to keep it open. It was the most expensive [base-load] power generation facility," he says.

An alternative approach

There are strategies for making the energy transition without nuclear power, says Gordon Edwards. Based on the research of Ralph Torrie, an expert in renewable energy, [for example,] Mr. Edwards points out that "if all the electrical systems used to heat buildings in Quebec were converted to heat pump systems, we would save so much electricity that you could run the entire Quebec transportation sector on the electricity savings without having to add a nuclear reactor" [or any other electrical generating plant].