McNAMARA: PhDs At The Nuclear Trough

McNAMARA: PhDs At The Nuclear Trough

Postby Oscar » Wed May 13, 2015 7:51 am

McNAMARA: PhDs At The Nuclear Trough

by Pat McNamara April 28, 2015

There’s something truly pathetic about doctors prostituting themselves to revive a dying industry. We are witnessing this at the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation (CCNI) where Dr. Duane Bratt and Dr. Neil Alexander, among others, are trying to breathe life back into the nuclear industry at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S).

Both men have recently been singing the merits of Small Modular Reactors (SMR) in Saskatchewan. Dr. Bratt wants to build five of them, preferably in abandoned uranium mines in the north while Dr. Alexander wants the U of S to get in on the first floor of SMR development. I don’t know if these doctors are misinformed or if they think they can bullshit us because they have “PhD” after their names.

Dr. Bratt doesn’t seem to know that they can’t build reactors at the abandoned mines because the responsible authorities have never cleaned the mines up. The level of contamination at these mine sites precludes any human activity until remediation is undertaken. Then again, that didn’t stop the Canadian government from locating a fish processing plant for First Nations on the docks at the abandoned Gunnar mine near Uranium City before it was cleaned up.

The U of S would have little trouble getting in on the ground floor of development of the SMR as virtually all development has stopped on them in North America. The most advanced were the two mPower reactors that Babcock and Wilcox (B&W) were supposed to build at Clinch River for the Tennessee Valley Authority. They cancelled the project in 2014 because they could not entice any other investors despite up to $229 million in grants from the American government. B&W, the Department of Energy and partners spent $400 million on the mPower program and another $600 million was needed to get ready for licensing.

- The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor being developed in South Africa was cancelled in 2010 because they couldn’t find any investors willing to get involved.

- Westinghouse announced in 2014 that it was getting out of SMR development because they could find no customers for SMR technology.

- SMRs have been held back by lack of trust in nuclear power, no investors, low natural gas prices, the Fukushima disaster and problems with licensing new nuclear technologies.

The nuclear industry estimates the SMRs will cost one to two billion each when they are ready for deployment in about ten years. This means they will cost four to five billion in “reality dollars” given that every nuclear project in North America has been grossly over budget. SMRs are nothing but the latest “flavor of the month” from the nuclear industry after full sized reactors died on the drawing board over the past ten years. The industry needed something to promote and this is it.

Dr. Bratt and Dr. Alexander took different paths to the U of S. Dr. Bratt is a political science PhD employed at Mount Royal University in Calgary. He’s never met a microphone he didn’t like as evidenced by his media comments on every topic of concern in Alberta, whether he had any expertise on the subject or not. He was the mouthpiece for Bruce Power in 2009 when they tried to build reactors in Alberta. He was front and centre during the demise of the “nuclear renaissance” when all thirteen of the reactors planned in Canada were cancelled. This complete failure did not deter Dr. Bratt as he coined a new phrase and wrote a book in 2012 on the “nuclear revival” in Canada.

Dr. Alexander comes to Saskatchewan from the most corrupt corporation on Earth where he was the Vice president of Business Development. SNC Lavalin and 115 of its subsidiaries have been banned for ten years from being involved in any project funded by the World Bank because of corruption, fraud and bribery charges in several countries around the world.

Dr. Alexander makes a number of claims in an April 27, 2015 missive from the U of S but does not substantiate a single one of them. He states that “Saskatchewan is actually quite an attractive potential ‘early mover’ for SMR companies” but does not say why. From past experience, we are left to conclude that the “Saskatchewan advantage” comes from the government and the university being co-opted by the nuclear industry. (The Nuclear Options, By Michael Robin, April 27, 2015 [ http://words.usask.ca/news/2015/04/27/t ... r-options/ ])

Dr. Alexander trumpets the findings of the Nuclear Attitudes Study conducted by the CCNI. This is asinine considering their results run contrary to the study commissioned by HUES3 and by the provincial government’s own UDP survey. His claim that “Saskatchewan people appear to be far less polarized and much more accepting of nuclear technologies than popular perception might indicate” was completely repudiated when communities across the north of the province demonstrated their opposition to high-level waste storage and chased the Nuclear Waste Management Organization right out of the province.

Dr. Alexander dismisses the findings of the UDP survey as follows. “What appears to have happened on previous occasions is that a very small number of people shouted very loudly and I would argue that’s not democracy at work,” he said. “To make good decisions we need future discussions to be rational, informed and fact-based rather than shouting matches where the prize goes to the loudest person no matter how poorly informed they are.” Once again, this comment has no basis in fact as the entire UDP process was set up, initiated, administered and controlled by the provincial government and nuclear industry sycophants.

Dr. Alexander digs deep into the manure pile for his next statement: “Nuclear is about four times safer than wind power, about 11 times safer than solar, something like 35 times safer than hydro, and safer than gas and coal by orders of magnitude.” Once again, no proof is given, no studies are referenced and no terms of reference are provided. This is nothing but pure horseshit from a PhD. Where are the facts? Where are the peer reviewed studies?

The nuclear industry is dying and renewable energy is taking its place. The intermittency argument precluding solar and wind from filling the void left by nuclear is evaporating as residential-scale storage batteries are being developed. The deployment of renewables has been accelerating across the globe while nuclear energy’s contribution has been declining for the past decade. Those are the facts.

I feel sorry for intelligent and highly trained people like Dr. Bratt and Dr. Alexander who succumb to the money offered by the dirty and dying nuclear industry. There’s so much they could do to make this a better country to live in but instead they waste their lives promoting and protecting the most toxic and corrupt industry on Earth. As I said at the start, it really is pathetic when you see doctors acting this way.

Pat McNamara
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Oscar
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