New Brunswick gives a $20 million gift to our American nuclear company
[ https://nbmediacoop.org/2021/02/15/new- ... r-company/ ]
by Susan O'Donnell February 15, 2021
In 2018, New Brunswick gave $5 million to ARC Nuclear, a nuclear energy company based in the United States. In 2021, it somehow looks better for our province to give $20 million to a clean energy company based in Saint John.
For a tiny start-up, the ARC company has been remarkably successful at getting money from governments in the two countries. Six weeks ago, when the parent American company was still called ARC Nuclear, the US government gave it $26.5 million ($33.6 million Canadian).
Last week, when the New Brunswick government gave it $20 million, the ARC company announced it would invest $30 million of its own money in the project. They call it “private-sector” investment. American taxpayers might call it something else.
The ARC company’s nuclear reactor, ARC-100, is very different from the NB Power CANDU nuclear reactor at Point Lepreau. The Lepreau reactor uses natural uranium mined in Canada as fuel. In their promotional brochure, the ARC company lists new fuel types for its reactor that appear to be sourced from the US.
The first type is enriched uranium. We don’t have a uranium enrichment plant in Canada. The US has an enrichment plant.
The second type of fuel proposed, the waste from light water nuclear reactors, we also don’t have in Canada. The US has light water reactors and lots of nuclear waste that it would be happy to export to Canada.
Another kind of fuel the ARC-100 proposes is “the nuclear material removed from weapons, which currently creates a serious storage and security problem.” Obviously, Canada does not have a serious nuclear weapons storage and security problem, but the US does. How convenient for the Americans if the Canadians could help them out with that.
If it is ever built, and if it operates successfully, like all nuclear reactors the ARC-100 will create spent (irradiated) fuel containing toxic radioactive poisons. They will require secure storage, isolated from all living things, for hundreds of thousands of years. . . .
MORE. . . .
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Nuclear energy company gets $20M boost from province, Higgs says - Feb. 10, 2021
[ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brun ... -1.5908995 ]
Premier Blaine Higgs used an upbeat state of the province speech Wednesday to announce his government will spend more taxpayer dollars to support the development of small modular nuclear reactors ...