HARDING: WEEKLY - Saskatchewan Sustainability

[Oscar]

GOVERNMENT URANIUM COMMITTEE LIKE FOX IN CHICKEN COOP

Saskatchewan’s Sustainability - R-Town News Nov. 7, 2008

http://www.saskfarmnews.com/index.html

By Jim Harding

In late October the Sask Party government created the Saskatchewan Uranium Development Partnership. By March it‘s to recommend how to expand the nuclear industry in our province. This is like asking the fox to protect the chicken coop, for three members - Cameco, Bruce Power and Trans-Canada Corporation - are already partners in the nuclear industry, co-owning the first privatized nuclear plants in Canada.

This committee won’t allow any submissions, suggesting the government is wary of public participation. In spite of news-making promotions implying Saskatchewan people are pronuclear, a May opinion poll on the prospects of a nuclear plant on Lake Diefenbaker showed slightly more opposition than support (40.5% to 38%). Informed, balanced public dialogue would likely shift more towards a non-nuclear energy strategy. Perhaps realizing this, the government has chosen to spend taxpayer money for nuclear promotions rather than fair public input. The $3 million dollars would have been much better spent increasing the wind power capacity of Sask Power, which would actually help reduce greenhouse gases.

The government falsely claims its committee represents Saskatchewan’s diversity, but one member, ex-Greenpeacer Patrick Moore, doesn’t even live here and does paid promotional work for the U.S. nuclear industry-funded Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). Another, Ray Ahenakew, has previously worked along-side the AECL to try to get First Nations to accept a nuclear waste dump. A similar bias exists through the whole Committee.

That the Chamber of Commerce, SUMA and SARM are participating in this closed and biased process doesn’t speak well for their transparency. They should be exploring energy alternatives with an open mind. They’d find that more local economic development, including jobs, comes from the much safer and sustainable renewable resources.
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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley

[Oscar]

THE OBAMA PHENOMENA…AND US

Saskatchewan’s Sustainability - R-Town News, Nov. 14, 2008

http://www.saskfarmnews.com/index.html

By Jim Harding

Obama’s election could be a watershed in human rights. The US may finally get healthcare insurance, considered a right in most developed countries, which spread across Canada after Saskatchewan won it almost a half century ago.

Though we are healthcare pioneers, we shouldn’t be smug. Our present resource boom depends upon the US continuing to be an energy importer. We are second only to Alberta in Canada in producing oil and gas, and stand alone as the world largest producer of uranium, upon which the US military-industrial nuclear system depends.

Canada has passed Saudi Arabia as the US’s major oil supplier, but Obama’s commitment to achieve energy independence may soon alter this. In his first communication with the President-Elect, Harper wanted to secure the US market for Alberta’s excessively dirty heavy oil, which will be a hard sale with most Americans wanting to get back on the Kyoto track. Obama’s campaign repeated a commitment to renewable energy, and he remains lukewarm to nuclear power due to concerns about safety, waste and proliferation. His Nevada victory was helped by his opposition to the Bush plan to bury nuclear wastes near Las Vegas.

In 2006 the US added more wind power capacity than the nuclear industry added worldwide. With the financial crisis, the Obama government will not look positively on more loan guarantees and subsidies (now over $400 billion) to keep the nuclear industry afloat. A recent referendum voted 68% for a nuclear phase-out in Obama’s backyard, Chicago, one of the most concentrated areas of nuclear power in the US.

It seems counterproductive to provide healthcare insurance while ramping up heavy oil and uranium production that make the planet and her people sick. Instead of making our economy more dependent on US imports of these non-renewables, isn’t it time Saskatchewan took its responsibility for converting to a sustainable economy?

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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

[Oscar]

SASKATCHEWAN’S SUSTAINABILITY for Nov. 21st, 2008 R-Town

WATER IS THE REAL BOTTOM LINE

By Jim Harding

Global warming is going to challenge drought-prone areas like Saskatchewan. Reduced Rocky Mountain glacial melt and spring runoff will cut the flow in the two Saskatchewan Rivers (which divert into the Qu’Appelle River lake chain) on which most Saskatchewan people depend. So we have to think ahead about the preservation of both water quantity and quality.

Globally most water used by humans is for irrigation, but in Canada it is for cooling thermal electrical plants, both coal and nuclear. This causes thermal pollution and contaminates water. For example, radioactive tritium, a known carcinogen, is discharged into Lake Ontario from nuclear plants. During the European drought of 2003, several nuclear plants shut or scaled down due to shortages of water. Several plants in drought zones of the US (which has the most reactors in the world) are facing water shortages. Loss-of-coolant-accidents (LOCA) are primarily how nuclear accidents get out of control.

Radioactive tailings from mining the uranium used in nuclear power plants have already contaminated large aquifers which are vital water sources for humans. Consequently there is talk of banning uranium mining in the Grand Canyon watershed. Recently Ottawa and twenty other municipalities called on the Ontario government to declare a moratorium on uranium mining in the Ottawa Valley. Uranium moratoria already exist in BC and Nova Scotia.

We don’t want to go from the frying pan into the fire when we phase out coal plants with their greenhouse gases. Achieving a sustainable society will require us to replace compartmentalized policies with more integrated ones. Renewable energy like wind and solar that is gaining ground everywhere doesn’t require or degrade water. It can achieve sustainable energy while protecting water, the real bottom line.

That Sask Power considered Lake Diefenbaker as a potential site for a nuclear plant shows they weren’t thinking clearly about water. It’s time we did.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

[Oscar]

SASKATCHEWAN’S SUSTAINABILITY for Dec. 5th R-Town News

BY Jim Harding

BIG CITY PAPERS UNDER-REPORT SUSTAINABLE ENERGY

Why are Bruce Power’s promotions of nuclear power consistently reported on the front page of Saskatchewan’s big city papers, while you have to dig into these papers to find news about sustainable energy? Sky Harvest’s proposed 140 Megawatt (MW) wind farm near Gardiner Dam gets a story on D1 of the Oct. 29th Leader Post, while Bruce Power’s 1,000 MW nuclear plant proposed somewhere along the North Saskatchewan river is reported as the front-page banner story on Nov. 28th. And it’s been like this for years.

An energy path using “distributed resources”, like wind or solar or tidal, doesn’t degrade the earth while extracting a non-renewable fuel and creating a toxic waste stream. Rather, it simply transfers existing renewable energy (it’s all solar) into electricity. Meanwhile, nuclear energy extracts a carcinogenic heavy metal, uranium, making its radioactive byproducts (e.g. radon gas), which continue to be formed for billions of years, more bio-available to contaminate watersheds and food chains. Then, after being used as nuclear fuel, a waste stream of long-lived poisons (e.g. plutonium) is created that will remind future generations that we weren’t thinking about them. The energy choice is a no-brainer.

But, for the big city papers and the big political parties, this is not about sustainable energy that protects water and health; it’s about profitable mega-projects. We already know that the most important thing that trickles down from nuclear mega-projects isn’t wealth but radioactive pollutants. So why aren’t the big city papers asking some hard questions: say about Bruce Power’s claim that we’ll need a 1,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020; that a two-plant complex would cost from $8 to $10 billion, or that 20,000 indirect and direct jobs would be created by this? How hard is it to ask how much each job will cost, and how this compares to jobs from sustainable energy? Or who will pay for the cost-overruns that characterize this already highly subsidized industry? Or, whether Bruce Power’s cost projections include decommissioning and perennial spent fuel management?

How hard is it to investigate similar promotional claims by the nuclear industry in Saskatchewan in the late 1980s that proved to be inflated or erroneous? Journalists should be encouraged to probe rather than simply parrot such corporate claims, otherwise the line between “news” and “spin” gets very blurred. The not-so-free corporate media has already lost much credibility, and we will need more in-depth reporting to help us make responsible decisions in our transition to a sustainable society.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu'Appelle Valley

[Oscar]

NUCLEAR NOT GOOD PROVIDER OF ELECTRICITY
Published in R-Town News, Dec. 19, 2008

BY Jim Harding

Enterprise and Innovation Minister Lyle Stewart is telling citizens that renewable energy like “Wind and solar have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable, they simply can not replace big base load plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric.” Stewart has been listening to Bruce Power, the Ontario firm that wants to build nuclear power plants on the North Saskatchewan.

In the March 15th Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon, head of Ontario’s Energy Probe, said what many have only thought, that nuclear power “is ill-suited for the production of electricity.” This is because it is too dangerous and costly to be powered up or down quickly to meet peak load demand for electricity. As Energy Probe’s energy analyst, Norm Rubin, said to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) January 18th, nuclear plants “are both technically and financially resistant to being dispatched for the grid’s convenience.”

This inflexibility leaves nuclear only able to produce base-load power, however it doesn’t do this cost-effectively or reliably. Historically, base load power has been provided by low-cost, low-performance plants like coal. With nuclear, however, you pay high-cost to get low-performance, and with less reliability. Planned or forced shutdowns can last for years, e.g. eight Ontario nuclear plants were out of service from 1998-2004. Expensive refurbishing of aging plants makes nuclear unreliable. Meanwhile customers pay more for nuclear than other more reliable base-load power; and then they pay, again, for the huge debt and cost overruns that characterize this highly subsidized industry.

Why would Saskatchewan people want to go down this unnecessary, costly road? If Minister Stewart is held to his view that nuclear power “must be evaluated in comparison to other base load energy sources”, it is game over for Bruce Power. Imagine the Saskatchewan grid depending on Bruce Power’s proposed 2,000 MW nuclear complex for half its electricity. This would require publicly funded back-up plants to ensure energy security, while the public would pay for transmission upgrades to enable Bruce Power to sell off excess electricity elsewhere at a profit. This is stupid economically and ecologically.

Base-load power can be produced from a variety of sources, including wind and solar. As energy analyst Norm Rubin said to the OEB, “A grid can in fact easily operate reliably with 100 percent flexible, reliable and dispatchable capacity”. Converting from polluting and radioactive big thermal plants to a “smart grid”, as some call it, is not only possible but safer and cheaper. The Saskatchewan taxpayer and ratepayer will pay dearly if the government continues to take bad corporate advice.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle valley.

[Oscar]

WHAT DOES SUSTAINABILITY MEAN?

From Jan. 2, 2009 R-Town News

By Jim Harding

The use of the term “sustainability” spreads rapidly. It’s becoming a catchphrase for everything from “green products” to sustain profitable sales, to changing technologies to better sustain eco-systems. It may become so ambiguous, even contradictory, that it loses its meaning.

Some confusion comes from the term “sustainable development” (SD), created in 1987 by the United Nations’ World Commission on Envirornment and Development (The Brundtland report). Many government and corporate bodies have defined SD as sustaining development, with “development” defined as perpetual economic growth. But this isn’t the fundamental meaning. In its Overview the UN report says that SD means humanity meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (p. 8). In a nutshell, SD is about inter-generation justice; learning to think about seven generations, as many Indigenous cultures put it.

There are several aspects to this, the most challenging being reconciling human development with ecological carrying capacity and the limits to growth; and tackling glaring and growing global inequalities, and, as part of this, attending better to meeting basic human needs. Protecting watersheds is paramount.

At the end of its Overview the UN says that its report is about supporting “development that is economically and ecologically sustainable” (p. 20). This couldn’t be clearer. If “sustainability” is twisted to mean sustaining economic growth that is ecologically unsustainable, it turns into its opposite and loses all intended meaning. Sustainability is about meeting needs today in such a way that this doesn’t jeopardize the capacity of people to meet their needs in the future. This will require changing both technology and economy so that eco-systems, upon which human need-fulfillment depend, are protected and, yes, restored. Quickly phasing-out all industrial toxic waste streams is a vital part of this.

As we start 2009 we still haven’t turned the corner on this. In the short term, the economic crisis may even distract us from the challenges of sustainability, of which the climate change crisis is clearly our biggest. But this economic crisis presents a great opportunity to rebuild our economy with job-supplying sustainable technologies, which is the least we should demand when public moneys are being used. Next week I’ll explore how the nuclear industry uses the term “sustainability”, and whether it meets the criteria according to the fundamental meaning of the term.

Happy New Year!

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

[Oscar]

Nuclear Myth-Busting Series: Coalition for Clean Green Saskatchewan

IS THERE REALLY A NUCLEAR REVIVAL?

By Jim Harding, Ph. D. January 15, 2009

Since the nuclear arms race began in the 1950s the nuclear industry has operated far from populated areas in relative secrecy. This has left the public vulnerable to its strategically-planned, one-sided promotions. These circumstances have to change for there to be informed dialogue about Bruce Power’s proposed two nuclear power plants on the North Saskatchewan River. The public deserves more complete and objective information than they are getting from nuclear corporations and the mainstream media that mostly promotes them. A good place to start is with a global overview of the state of the nuclear industry. Bruce Power, its corporate partner Cameco, and their supporters in the Canada West Foundation and Sask Party government are all creating hype about a nuclear power revival and how we must get on the economic development bandwagon. But what are the facts?

DECLINE IN RECENT YEARS

In 2008 there were 439 nuclear power plants, operating in 31 countries, with 372 Gigawatts (GW) capacity. This was five fewer plants than operated in 2003. In 2008 the proportion of electricity from nuclear, worldwide, dropped to 14 % from 16 % in 2005. In 2007 five countries (Armenia, Poland, Slovakia, South Africa and Switzerland) with a total of only 11 nuclear power plants increased the nuclear share in their electrical mix, while in eleven countries the role of nuclear declined. In Western Europe there are now 146 nuclear power plants operating, down from 177 in 1989. In 2007 the EU got 28 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, down from 32 %in 2002. And nearly half (47 %) of the nuclear-generated electricity in the EU is from one country, France.

France’s dependency on nuclear power for 80% of its electricity may be reassuring for nuclear technocrats; but with aging standardized technology and growing dangers of loss-of-coolant accidents as global warming intensifies, the public will not have long-term energy security.

NEW PLANT CONSTRUCTION

Will the construction of new nuclear power plants reverse this trend? According to the UN agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which regulates and promotes nuclear power, there were 35 new reactors under construction in fourteen countries in 2008. Eleven (11) of the 35 have been under construction for more than 20 years, and 15 of the 35 have no start-up date. The total of 35 was 18 fewer than were under construction in the late 90s. There are only 2 nuclear plants under construction in Western Europe, one in France and one in Finland. The French nuclear giant Areva is more than two years behind and 50 % over budget in Finland, where, due to “general incompetence”, it faces losses of $ 2 billion dollars. (Remember that along with Bruce Power and Cameco, Areva is on the Sask Party government’s Uranium Development Partnership.)

IS THERE AN ASIAN BOOM?

Thirty (30) of the 35 plants under construction worldwide are in Asia (19) or in Eastern Europe (11). The 14 nuclear power plants that started up between 2004-2007 were also from Asia (10) or Eastern Europe (4).

Let’s look at Asia in more depth. In 2007 there were 111 nuclear plants providing only 8 percent of the electricity in the region. And half of it (50 %) comes from one country, Japan. Japan has had serious problems with nuclear safety, having to shut down 7 plants after the earthquake in 2007, leading to a 4 % drop in electrical production in the region since 2006. China produces just 2% of its electricity from its 11 nuclear power plants. It has 6 plants under construction and several more under consideration. But there are major impediments, for China wants the transfer of French reprocessing technology as part of construction agreements with Areva, and it has to import 90 percent of the forgings for nuclear plant construction.

There are strong indications China is turning towards renewable energy. In 2007 it added more wind-generating capacity than the entire nuclear industry added worldwide. (Spain and the U.S. did the same thing.)

India produces only 3% of its electricity from its 17 nuclear power plants. Its state nuclear corporation is predicting 62 nuclear plants with 40 GW capacity by 2025, but it has consistently over-predicted nuclear growth. The country was to have 10 GW capacity by 2000, but just 22% of this (2.2. GW) was actually constructed. Unfortunately the U.S. has signed a nuclear technology transfer agreement with India even though India has not signed the already painfully compromised Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This U.S. action was opposed by 300 NGOs and 24 countries that think this will free up India’s domestic technology for nuclear weapons production. The “peaceful atom”, it seems, continues to prepare for nuclear war.

ACCURACY OF NUCLEAR PREDICTIONS

How accurate have the overall predictions of a nuclear revival been? In 1981 U.S. President Reagan predicted a “nuclear revival”, but the only nuclear growth during his two term office was 37,000 more nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) had predicted that by 1990 there would be 1,000 GW worldwide nuclear electrical capacity, but the actual amount was just 260 GW. (Twenty-eight years later there is still only 372 GW capacity). In 2005, announcing the massive state subsidies in his Nuclear Power 2010 plan, U.S. President Bush again predicted a nuclear revival. But there will be NO new nuclear power plants in the U.S. by 2010, and probably only one new plant by 2015.

REFURBISHING AGING REACTORS

The nuclear industry has maintained its present capacity not so much through new nuclear pants as by extending the operations of aging reactors. There have been 110 reactor upgrades in the U.S. since 1977. In Ontario there have been huge cost overruns in refurbishing reactors at Bruce Power, and all other Candus in operation will require expensive refurbishing or shutting down within a decade. The average age of the 119 reactors that have already been shut down worldwide was 22 years, whereas the reactors still in operation now average 24 years. Utilities want to increase the age of operation to 40 years, and even up to 60 years. Much of this cost would fall on taxpayers and the rest would fall on ratepayers.

NUCLEAR’S CREDIBILITY GAP

Let’s be very “generous” and assume that all functioning nuclear power plants could be upgraded to operate for 40 years. And let’s assume, as part of this, that the public can be convinced to accept such costly measures, even when cheaper energy options that don’t create a toxic waste stream or require water for cooling and can reduce more greenhouse gases are readily available. Then, how many nuclear power plants would have to be built for the nuclear industry to maintain the nuclear status quo? According to an analysis in the latest Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, if we exclude 20 of the 35 reactors already under construction (the ones with a start-up date), there would have to be 70 more nuclear plants on-line by 2015 (that’s in six years) and another 192 more by 2025. That’s 262 new nuclear power plants by 2025. This would require one new plant every one and one-half months until 2015 and one every 18 days after that until 2025. (See Source).

This is so farfetched that it is delusional. In addition to the 35 nuclear power plants under construction, the IAEA lists another 78 that are somewhere in the proposal and planning process. Even if these were all built and came on-line (which isn’t the way things have gone in the past), this would only be 113 new nuclear power plants, far short of the 262 plants required just to maintain the nuclear power status quo. What the industry calls a “nuclear revival” turns out to be a nuclear phase-out.

Don’t forget that the costs of decommissioning and nuclear waste management will be passed on to our children and their children, who will not get any electrical benefits from the technology. But the sooner the phase-out happens, the smaller the burden that will be passed on.

MISPLACED NUCLEAR “OPTIMISM”

In spite of these compelling mathematics, The World Nuclear Association keeps telling us to have blind faith and believe that there is a “nuclear revival.” Their confidence is misplaced, even irrational. There is not the major investment in nuclear that occurred in the 1980s; and, if anything, the financial (credit) markets are becoming more skeptical of nuclear power. (It is no accident that all nuclear plants under construction are in centrally planned economies and/or backed by state-funding.) The nuclear industry can no longer put nuclear wastes on the back burner, which makes the dangers and cost-overruns of nuclear power even more transparent to the public. And there are some very practical impediments, such as shrinking industrial capacity and skilled worker shortage. The number of nuclear suppliers in the U.S. has shrunk from 400 to 80 and the number of companies certified to work in this industry has shrunk from 900 to 200 since the 1980s. Fourty percent of current nuclear plant workers (just 8 % of whom are under 32) are eligible for retirement within 5 years. And the upcoming generation of workers would rather train in renewable energy to bring about conversion to a sustainable society.

But it is in the interests of Bruce Power and Cameco to have Saskatchewan people believe in a nuclear revival. While a pipe-dream, the boom mentality keeps the hearts and minds of Saskatchewan business and political elites distracted from the vital ethical questions of sustainability and inter-generational responsibility. Bruce Power and Cameco may not believe their own propaganda, but they clearly want to get the profits from the uranium-nuclear market while it lasts. Since Bruce Power is in the business of making money from the highly subsidized nuclear power industry, it, of course, will do whatever it can to convince us to support them. But the public here and elsewhere cannot afford to be damned with the long-term consequences. There is likely no other industry where corporate amorality and immorality is as dangerous to the planet and its creatures. The sooner it is shut down and replaced by sustainable energy the better for us and future generations. Thankfully the process is already underway. Now the people of Saskatchewan need to join hands with others to accomplish this.

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NOTE: Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental studies (University of Waterloo) and justice studies (University of Regina) and author of Canada’s Deadly Secret; Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System (Fernwood, 2007).

SOURCE: The major source of information is “2008 World Nuclear Industry Status Report”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov./Dec. 2008.

CONTACT CLEAN GREEN SASK: cleangreensask@yahoo.ca

[Oscar]

IS NUCLEAR POWER SUSTAINABLE?

BY Jim Harding

Published on Jan. 16, 2009 in R-Town News

The nuclear industry is trying to jump on the sustainability bandwagon. The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) even has a website “Nuclear energy and sustainable development”, where it presents itself as being sustainable. But is it? Remember “sustainable development” is about us meeting our needs “without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs”; and to do this, development must be both “economically and ecologically sustainable.”

The UN evaluated nuclear power on pages 182-89 of its 1987 report. Regarding economics, it said nuclear “has not met earlier expectations that it would be the key to ensuring an unlimited supply of low cost energy”; its costs have increased rapidly “during the last 10-15 years, so that the earlier clear cost advantage of nuclear over the service life of the plant has been reduced or lost altogether”. It continues that “nuclear provides about one-third of the energy that was forecast for it 10 years ago”.

The economics of nuclear have eroded further since this was written. But what about ecological sustainability? The UN report says “many thousands of tons of spent fuel and high level waste” will need to be isolated “from the biosphere for many hundred of thousands of years that they will remain hazardously radioactive”; while emphasizing that “the problem of nuclear waste disposal remains unsolved.” Nothing much has changed, except that more nuclear wastes have accumulated.

Not surprisingly nuclear industry claims about sustainability are rife with confusion. In 1990 AECL’s President was invited to speak in the “Issues of Technology” engineering lecture series at the University of Regina. His confusing title, “Nuclear Power: The Clean Air Alternative to Sustainable Energy”, even suggested that, as an “alternative to sustainable energy”, nuclear was unsustainable.

And it clearly is! Nuclear fuel, uranium, is non-renewable, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates that there’s only 80 years of economically recoverable uranium at today’s demand. Any expansion of nuclear power will lower the time-span. If pushed on this, nuclear proponents respond that a new line of breeder reactors could use spent fuel (plutonium) to produce electricity; however this would be even more uneconomic and the reprocessing technology would create an even more dangerous radioactive waste stream for future generations.

The nuclear industry is primarily motivated to sustain itself. And no matter how it tries to twist the meaning, it fails the test of sustainability. Next time I’ll look at the claim that nuclear can reduce the greenhouse gases causing global warming.
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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

[Oscar]

IS NUCLEAR ENERGY CLEAN?

SASKATCHEWAN’S SUSTAINABILITY

From R-Town News Jan. 30, 2009

IS NUCLEAR ENERGY CLEAN?
by Dr. Jim Harding

The nuclear industry appeals to our concerns about global warming when it promotes itself as being the “clean energy”. You’ve probably seen the ads. And advertisers know if you repeat something enough times it starts to be taken as “fact”. We hear “nuclear is clean” over and over, including from provincial government officials who reflexively say nuclear is the way to reduce greenhouse gases.

But is it? Coal plants create a lot of carbon while they generate two-thirds of the world’s electricity. Nuclear plants don’t directly spew carbon, so the industry argues we should replace coal plants with nuclear ones. Sounds logical, right? Actually, calling nuclear “clean” is a play on words. Carbon is emitted all along the nuclear fuel chain, from the hard-rock mining to nuclear plant construction, and therefore a “full carbon audit” must be done to draw any solid conclusions. Nuclear plants also emit a host of cancer-causing radioactive isotopes; even dust-mites show that being invisible doesn’t make something “clean”.

2,500 nuclear plants would have to be operating by 2050 for it to play the same relative role in electrical generation as coal does today. This would require a nuclear plant being built somewhere every week. There are presently 439 operating nuclear plants, worldwide, only 35 new ones under construction and perhaps 80 more being planned, with several hundred approaching decommissioning. As a means to address global warming, nuclear is an unrealistic, uneconomic pipedream.

Anyway, it wouldn’t solve anything if all these plants were built. The International Energy Agency (IEA) scenario has nuclear power expanding four-fold and requiring 32 expensive new nuclear plants yearly until 2050. But this would only reduce total carbon by 4%, while we need a minimum of 50% cuts by then. Because of this, 300 international NGOs are calling for the removal of nuclear power from the list of ways to reduce carbon under the Kyoto Protocol.

A 2008 Stanford University environmental engineering study compared the capacity of several energy options to reduce carbon and other air pollutants. The best options, in rank order, were wind, concentrated solar, geothermal, tidal, photovoltaics (solar), wave and hydro. Nuclear power and coal (even with carbon capture) ranked poorest after bio-fuels. So-called “clean coal” emitted at least 60 times more carbon and air pollution than wind. Nuclear emitted 25 times more.

Rather than being “clean”, nuclear is an obstacle to carbon reduction. The choice is not “nuclear versus coal”, but between these polluting technologies and the new sustainable energy ones. We had best get on with it, soon.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

[Oscar]

HOW “GREEN” IS THE FEDERAL STIMULUS PACKAGE?

by Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in R-Town News February 6, 2009

It’s hard for supporters of Prime Minister Harper to grasp how a call for a $15 billion cut to spending during the election turns into a $40 billion stimulus package, and big deficit.

Polls show most Canadians think it’s about keeping power.

However, if this helps restructure Canada so the economy is more ecologically sustainable, something good could come of it.

So, what do we find?

Energy policy remains our biggest challenge; however, only $2.4 of $40 billion stimulus over two years is allocated for this.

Half goes for “green infrastructure”, primarily for retrofitting and energy efficiency, which is always good.

A closer look shows nothing to reduce massive greenhouse gases (GHGs) from transportation, through expanding public transit.

The remaining $1.2 billion, for “green energy”, is a pittance compared to the $54 billion Obama allocated. ($6 billion would be required to match the U.S.)

And most of U.S. spending is for renewable energy, which will immediately reduce GHGs, so it seems Obama is serious about tackling global warming.

Not so in Canada.

Though called “green energy”, the spending goes to sustain the non-renewables which create GHGs and radioactive wastes.

$400 million goes to help the oil industry develop its controversial carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

There’s even a hint of further corporate tax write-offs.

The powerful Alberta tarsands lobby has clearly succeeded in getting Harper to help lower its costs to remain profitable during the economic downturn.

Another $350 million goes to the already heavily subsidized AECL, mostly to develop its Advanced Candu Reactor (ARC), which the private company Bruce Power is proposing along the North Sask River.

And what of the renewables?

They are absent!

Harper’s stimulus package didn’t even extend the Eco-Energy Program that has provided 4000 MW of renewable, mostly wind, capacity since 2007. (This is equivalent to four large nuclear plants.)

As one of the highest inland wind regions in Canada, and with wind providing more than five times the employment as nuclear, Saskatchewan communities would have benefitted from this program.

Independent research consistently shows renewables are the most cost-effective way to “green energy”.

One recent Stanford study compared the pollution if all U.S. vehicles were fueled with electricity from coal, nuclear or wind.

Coal (even with carbon capture) created at least 60 times, and nuclear 25 times, the carbon footprint of wind.

With a father who was an accountant for Imperial Oil, and Harper’s first Calgary job in Imperial Oil, I realize the Prime Minister has “oil in his blood”.

So, when his government funds carbon-capture or nuclear and ignores renewables in its “green energy” stimulus package, we’ll just have to learn to become colour blind, or see a brownish green.

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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley. He regularly does a column called "Saskatchewan's Sustainability" for the province-wide weekly R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Is Environmental Health the new Bottom Line?

Saskatchewan Sustainability

Published in R-Town News on February 13, 2009

by Jim Harding

Everything we breath, drink and eat comes from the earth’s biosphere. We are continually replenished as elements flow through us. Thankfully we are finally realizing that we have evolved to require particular nutrients from the earth for our physical and mental wellbeing.

Resource extraction, agribusiness and industrial production are, however, spoiling our nest.

Mining brings toxic heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, mercury, and uranium into the biosphere. These are not good for us. Agribusiness and industry spew toxic chemicals into the airways, waterways and food chains upon which we depend. These toxic materials continually recycle and bio-accumulate through global ecological processes. We can find pesticides in the arctic, pharmaceuticals in many watersheds and even plastics in the middle of the ocean.

This arrogant and misguided approach to “development” damages the biosphere from above and below. And this in turn hurts us. CFCs have thinned the protective ozone layer and increased skin cancer from UV radiation, while uranium mining bringing more radon gas into the life-support systems has increased lung cancer. The steady buildup of atmospheric carbon from burning fossil fuels is raising global temperatures and ocean levels with devastating implications for extreme weather and biodiversity. Increases in the nitrogen load streaming into the oceans from agribusiness and deforestation steadily undermine rich marine ecologies.

All the while our body burden of toxins and carcinogens grows. It should come as no surprise that cancer went from the 8th to 2nd cause of death from 1900-1950 (in the US), that many immune-deficiency diseases are on the rise and that reproductive health of many species is waning.

What we do to the earth we ultimately do to ourselves, our children, and, let’s not forget, to other creatures. We need a new credo that says “Do Unto Other Creatures As We Would Have Them Do Unto Us”. Continuing to see human progress in Promethean terms, where we treat the earth as an object of greed and contempt, inevitably undermines our individual and collective health. Economic growth that contaminates the biosphere may raise the value of some investments on the stock market, but we have long passed the point where the full cost and suffering far outweighs any short-term economic benefits.

We can’t continue to use the land, air and water as places to extract, produce and dump poisons. “Out of sight, out of mind” is not realistic, nor sustainable. An ethic and practice of preserving and restoring environmental health is therefore becoming our new bottom line. The mind-set has to change one person, one family, one community, one province at a time.

What do we need to do to take up this challenge?

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley and writes a weekly column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Let’s get honest community feedback on nuclear power!

Saskatchewan Sustainability

Published in R-Town News on February 20, 2009

by Jim Harding

Prince Albert wants “feedback from the community” on Bruce Power building nuclear plants “within a 50 km radius” of the city. PA’s city Manager issued a release Feb. 10th saying “…news of Bruce Power considering the PA region as a site has been circulating in the community for some time…The time is right to now go to the public and ask if they support the City investigating the potential opportunities associated with attracting Bruce Power to develop in the region…”

Bruce Power is the private Ontario corporation promoting nuclear plants along the North Saskatchewan River. Its ownership is highly integrated with uranium mining and electrical transmission, and its business plan is to convince the Sask Party government to approve it generating electricity for profit on the public grid. Yet the term “nuclear” never once appears in the PA press release “City to Conduct Telephone Poll on Green Power Energy and Bruce Power Development.” Is “Green Power Energy” the new code word to make nuclear power more palatable? Is PA’s poll trying to animate the appearance of support for Bruce Power without discussing nuclear risks or the cheaper alternatives?

It’s not right for PA officials to hide behind false claims that nuclear is “green”. This is a play on words. While a nuclear plant doesn’t directly spew greenhouse gases, uranium mining, enrichment and the gargantuan amount of cement and steel in plant construction use masses of fossil fuel. (A Stanford study found nuclear creates 25 times the carbon as does wind power). And a technology that regularly releases cancer-causing radioactivity can hardly be “green”. Several European studies show a direct link between proximity to nuclear facilities and childhood leukemia. Will the PA poll be asking for feedback on this?

A lot goes on in back rooms to devise “public acceptance” campaigns promoting nuclear power. Sometimes the public gets a peek at this. Last May a secret report “Sask Power – Preliminary Citing of a Nuclear Power Plant” was leaked. On page 8 it says, “Population density near a power plant is important, particularly in the event of a severe accident. The general principle is to site the facility in a sparsely populated area that is far from large population centres”. Will the PA poll be asking for feedback about this?

In 2005 electricity from renewable sources globally surpassed that from the highly subsidized nuclear industry and is expanding quickly. Wind, solar and other renewables are providing reliable base-load power without ecologically destructive mining for toxic fuels, contaminating waterways for cooling thermal plants, or leaving an endlessly toxic waste burden to future generations. And they provide many more permanent jobs. Will the PA poll be asking for feedback on this?

If PA or other cities along the North Saskatchewan want honest feedback, they mustn’t hide behind erroneous corporate clichés. It must be informed feedback. The already tenuous public trust between citizens, politicians and public servants is at stake here.

People may wish to call the PA City about this matter at 306-953-4395.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley and writes a weekly column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Is Nuclear Power Really Affordable?

By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability

Published in R-Town News on March 6, 2009

The Ontario nuclear corporation Bruce Power (BP) is running a high-profile PR campaign along the North Saskatchewan River – from Lloydminster to North Battleford to Prince Albert. It’s circulating a 24-page flier “Saskatchewan 2020 – Clean Energy. New Opportunity” saying it wants to provide us with “clean, reliable and affordable electricity”. In past pieces I’ve shown why nuclear isn’t clean. But is it reliable and affordable? The answer will not be found in BP’s fliers but in how it runs its operations elsewhere.

In Ontario, BP is behind schedule and over budget refurbishing two reactors. The promise to have one reactor online by 2009 won’t be met. Ontario’s lucky electrical consumers get to pay half of the first $300 million cost overrun, which is already at $237 million. After that they pay one-quarter. What a deal: a private corporation gets to profit using the public grid while being guaranteed public backing for going over budget. BP has already raised the possibility of a partnership with the Sask Party government and/or SaskPower for its guestimated $10 billion dollar project, and there’s no reason to believe similar economic risks wouldn’t be borne by us.

But there’s more. BP’s plan of two large, expensive reactors on our small grid has been criticized for making the grid vulnerable and requiring costly back-up power. BP showcases New Brunswick as a workable example of having a large nuclear plant on a small grid. But it fails to mention that the Point Lepreau plant is shut down to undergo a $1.4 billion refurbishing, and that this is behind schedule and already costing the taxpayers an extra $90 million. Nor does BP mention that when it tried to get the refurbishing contract, its proposal was $ 450 million higher that the AECL’s, the one accepted, and that BP wanted to run and profit from the plant for 20 years.

What might be in store for us? BP says it’s considering three reactor designs here. One, AECL’s ARC-1000 exists only on paper and yet has already cost us hundreds of millions in Harper government subsidies. Westinghouse’s reactor also exists only on paper. The French company Areva’s EPR reactor is the only one being built, and it is three years behind schedule, $1.6 billion over budget and the Finnish government is presently seeking $3.8 billion in damages.

I hope you get the picture. Taxpayers pay front-end subsidies. We pay again for cost overruns. We pay for other sources of electricity when nuclear projects don’t start on time or shut down for costly refurbishing. And then our kids will pay again for costly decommissioning and futuristic nuclear waste management. All the while there are cheaper and safer renewable options. BP’s track record elsewhere suggests we should be very skeptical about becoming another guinea pig for the costly nuclear industry.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley and writes a weekly column for R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Is The Grass-Roots Awakening Over Nuclear Power?

Saskatchewan Sustainability - by Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News March 20, 2009

I recently travelled to speak at meetings discussing what could happen if Bruce Power (BP) built nuclear plants on the North Saskatchewan River. There were over 800 people who attended gatherings at Paradise Hill, near Lloydminster, North Battleford, Shellbrook and Prince Albert.

Farmers, First Nations, workers, seniors and students expressed concerns about water, health, safety and public debt. There was disquiet, harbouring on anger, about the Sask Party government’s close ties to Ontario’s nuclear industry. Some media (e.g. Global and Cable TV, CBC radio and the PA Herald) gave some coverage, but, typically, the big city papers ignored grass-roots considerations.

BP’s massively distributed promotional booklet lacks accurate information on water, global warming, sustainable employment and energy options. Their own figures show 94-95% support for solar and wind, while another poll shows only 25% support a private nuclear corporation like BP getting onto the public grid. Yet BP fudges its statistics to make it look like Saskatchewan people overwhelmingly support them coming here to build nuclear plants.

Local political and business leaders deserve more objective information than they’re getting. BP asserts that the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers have adequate water for nuclear plants. Meanwhile, government studies suggest the flow in both rivers will continue to decline due to accelerating glacial melt, reduced spring runoff and evaporation. One independent calculation has BP requiring coolant water during start-up of two nuclear plants equal to 87% of what Prince Albert uses in a whole year.

It’s been an unlevel playing field. I had to meet privately with Mayors and the head of the Chamber of Commerce at the Battlefords, where BP officials and supporters were unwilling to participate in a public debate. Several church leaders recently called for an open, transparent and accountable discussion on this vital matter. BP and Sask Party officials are being invited to a Round Table at Fort Qu’Appelle, March 27th, and I’m sure other gatherings will follow.

It’s time the alternatives were fully explored. Just by building the wind power already underway in Alberta, Saskatchewan could have 20% of our grid supplied from wind. (It’s now only 3%). This would make us a world leader in renewables. An Irish company recently decided to produce 400 MW more of wind in Alberta. Until the government alters SaskPower policies to honestly encourage renewables, we will continue to fall behind others.

The Sask Party has received political donations from Cameco and Trans-Canada, who own BP, as well as from Areva, which BP says it might ask to build nuclear plants here. These are the same nuclear corporations put on the Uranium Development Partnership that will soon recommend what energy policy the Sask Party government should pursue.

Is the plan to protect the grid for political pals in the nuclear industry?

If the grass-roots don’t want this, it will have to continue to organize public meetings to energetically discuss this matter.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who writes a weekly column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Why Are We Ignoring Biomass In Saskatchewan?

Saskatchewan Sustainability - by Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News March 27, 2009

I recently attended a conference at Prince Albert’s SIAST campus on “Sustainability of Natural Resources.” Speakers addressed everything from biofuels, to agroforestry, to integrated waste management. I spoke on how the nuclear industry fails the tests of sustainability, something previously discussed in R-Town News.

A common thread was the use of biomass, i.e. wood materials, agricultural wastes and energy crops as a renewable resource. We hear more about biofuels, such as ethanol fermented from grain or corn, because governments have created a market as an alternative liquid fuel for the internal combustion engine. Whether net energy and carbon reduction is always achieved is being vigorously debated.

There’s no such debate about biomass, for it’s as close to carbon-neutral as possible. As Natural Resources says “As a tree grows it absorbs CO2 from the air…when wood is burned CO2 is released…The same amount of CO2 would be released if the tree died…” Wood used in new highly efficient wood stoves is environmentally preferable to heating with gas or oil, and biomass remains an untapped sustainable fuel for electrical generation.

Biomass can be taken directly from Canada’s forests, though this should not be done through clear-cutting which undermines habitats and biodiversity. There is great potential from “agro-forestry” where trees are grown to diversify crops, with the advantage of soil and water conservation. While Harper’s government commits to expensive and risky carbon storage to try to salvage the non-renewable fossil fuel industry, we could be shifting to renewables, including biomass. And this would enhance ecologically-sound waste management that protects our threatened waterways.

Sound too good to be true?

It only takes a shift from an “industrial” to a “sustainability” mindset – something governments with close ties to big corporations stubbornly resist. But there is a solid track record. In Sweden some human wastewater gets separated to irrigate an adjacent tree crop, and the remaining effluent is used as fertilizer. The crop is cyclically harvested for biomass to generate electricity.

Canada has been slow to catch on, though Vernon B.C. has successfully used an integrated approach to waste management since the 1980s. Outlook now has a demonstration site and Regina Beach, on Long Lake, is considering the cost-effective process. If municipalities along the Saskatchewan Rivers and the Qu’Appelle Valley all adopted this approach, they’d enhance watershed protection and water conservation, and could also generate renewable electricity for the Saskatchewan grid. There is potential for using other waste materials. Sustainable community pioneer, Craik, is looking at decontaminating toxic waste materials such as railway ties and power poles while burning the biomass for electricity.

Saskatchewan’s towns, villages and RM’s have a key role in showing the way to sustainable living. If you want more information on such projects a good resource is Larry White at Forest First 306-765-2860.

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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for the weekly chain R-Town News.