All Canadians need facts - not hype - on SMNRs . . .

[Oscar]

New Brunswick Indigenous communities and Canadians need facts about SMNRs, not sales hype

[ https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2023/09 ... 20industry ]

Until the government shares facts instead of sales pitches for small modular nuclear reactors, Indigenous nations must assume that representation is not connected to people, but to industry.

OPINION | BY HUGH AKAGI AND SUSAN O’DONNELL | September 28, 2023

EXCERPT: "FREDERICTON, N.B.—Governments and other nuclear proponents are failing both Indigenous and settler communities by promoting sales and publicity material about small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs) instead of sharing facts by independent researchers not tied to the industry.

For decades, nuclear proponents, including both the federal and New Brunswick governments, have focused on the ‘dream of plentiful power’ without highlighting the risks. The nuclear fuel chain—mining uranium, chemically processing the ore, fabricating the fuel, fissioning uranium in a reactor creating toxic radioactive waste remaining hazardous for tens of thousands of years—leaves a legacy of injustices disproportionately felt by Indigenous Peoples and all our relations.

Now the same is happening with the push for SMNRs. We are promised safer reactors by nuclear startup companies in New Brunswick using modifications of reactor designs—molten salt, sodium cooled—that have never operated successfully and safely on a grid anywhere despite billions of dollars of public funds spent in other countries. . . . . "

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