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Saturday, December 29th, 2007
Self Regulation - For What It's Worth
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
This is the only important opinion I have to express. Whether or not you agree is up to you and it really doesn't matter to me if you do or don't.
THINGS TO DO TO SAVE THE PLANET
Establish a lottery for the birth of children based on regional sustainability. In all fairness to a balanced planet, we must strive for ZERO POPULATION GROWTH (ZPG), one child per human MAX. For life.
Kill Your Television
Outlaw electricity not produced by wind, wave, or solar.
Establish a system of catagorization to determine what goods should be manufactured exclusively from recycled materials ie: clothes pegs could be designated as class one - manufacture exclusively from pre-used materials and not from wood.
Trade may be conducted in real goods only and not credit or currency. This one needs to be roughed out more, fer shur.
Origin of manufacture is responsible for the retrieval and recycling of packaging for goods created and also responsible for retrieval and recycling of all parts manufactured in the production of said goods for the life of all things manufactured. Take 'dat.
Outlaw the exploration, mining, and use of uranium and uranium based products. If it's that hard to get the stuff up out of the ground, it must be for a legitimate evolution-based reason. It's probably down there in order not to screw things up that are out of contact with it.
Outlaw petroleum production. If it's that hard to get the stuff up out of the ground, it must be for a legitimate evolution-based reason. It's probably down there in order not to screw things up that are out of contact with it.
Outlaw manufacture of all petroleum based goods.
Outlaw the internal combustion engine
Outlaw air travel. We've invented giant aerosol cans spewing havoc into the atmosphere. At any one time there are at least 5000 planes over North America helping with the demise of life. As repellant as the concept may be, whoever was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre is the only entity that has actually done something for the environment on a significant scale. While air travel was stopped over the next week, the average North American night time temperature dropped by 4 degrees.
Outlaw the importation of food
Outlaw the manufacture and use of plastic. It doesn't go away. It breaks down into parts per billion, granted, but it is currently on the shoreline of every waterway (creek, stream, river, lake, and ocean) on the face of the planet and has entered the food chain.
Clean up nitrates from our land and water and prevent them from assisting blue algae blooms now found at river mouths on every ocean
Outlaw large agriculture and all agriculture for economic gain (including trade) and redirect dependence on local and regional operations
Outlaw large forestry and redirect dependence on local and regional operations
Disassemble all hydro dams
Outlaw construction within 300 meters of all lakes and waterways, disassemble all human construction already established, and reestablish growth within that 300-meter zone of indigenous plants
Outlaw the manufacture of all non-recyclable and non-biodegradable products
Outlaw sewage disposal by water and waste drainage into all water
Reestablish political boundaries by geographical and/or geological region
Outlaw all threats to the food of non-human species
Outlaw the representation of value and worth by things that have no value, ie: credit and currency
Outlaw travel between regions for economic gain with the exception of the arts
Outlaw construction and maintenance of all non-regionally funded travel ways
Outlaw government
Outlaw unlimited competition
Outlaw universal monetary systems
Outlaw monoculture and promote diversity in every walk of life, economic or otherwise
Outlaw religion but not spirituality. (Regarding Christianity or most other ancient religions...to quote at least 7 or 8 ancient civilizations as to what it's been, is, and evermore shall be: TIME AND NAVIGATIONAL MARKERS!!!!!
The three stars in Orion's Belt (Known for AT LEAST 14,000 years in at least 7 or 8 ancient civilizations as The Three Kings) gradually line up with Sirius (The Brightest Star in The Eastern Night Sky) and by the 22nd of December, the sun (The Son, The Lamb of God, The Glory Of Heaven) appears to exhibit 0 degrees amplitude for three days in the constellation of the Southern Cross (Crucification) until the Kings and The Star line up to point to sunrise on the 25th of December. The sun slowly gains amplitude daily (Resurrection, Ascension from The Cross) until by Spring Equinox (Easter) there are more hours of light than darkness (The Light overtakes the powers of Darkness) and the sun (Son) returns. Now will all you self-righteous zealots please get off my lawn?)
Outlaw prejudice, species-based or otherwise
Discourage arrogance
Outlaw zoos and domestication of non-human animals except by willing participants
Outlaw food gathering for economic gain (including trade)
Outlaw financial, medical, and food assisted aid to stressed regions of the planet
Outlaw profit
Begin an intense program of locating and thoroughly cleaning all dumps and landfill sites and purifying the soil, (if we can find the money to send a robot to Mars, we can find the money and intellectual resources to do this) and initiate prosecutions to the full extent of the law.
Pass legislation to create laws in order to accommodate the above. None responsible shall escape penalization.
Re-institute the death penalty for crimes against the environment
Outlaw science for money
Plant as many indigenous hardwood trees in a non-monocultural manner as possible…NOW
It's just a thought. Don't forget you have to be willing to bend to accommodate each situation.
Uranium = Death
* uranium, and the many by-products produced by its decomposition when extracted from the ground and exposed to air, is unquestionably linked to debilitating and fatal diseases - several forms of cancer, bone decay and anemia are caused by exposure to radioactive alpha, beta, gamma and neutron emissions
* contrary to what governments and mining companies may say, there is no safe level of exposure to radioactivity - maximum permitted doses quantify exposure levels to radioactivity that governments have deemed to be worth the risk
* uranium exploration (also contrary to most government and industry assertions) can be hazardous to the environment and human health if exploratory holes are drilled deep into the ground (for core sampling) and left unfilled or improperly filled (a proper way to fill them is to use a special type of clay that expands when wet) - these holes serve as chimneys for uranium and its by-products (e.g., radon gas) to emerge from the ground and spread in the wind or into the watershed (EDITOR’S NOTE: The Robertsville mining site, (where our protest is being held) has 200 unsealed drill holes from previous exploration and the Frontenac Ventures Corporation is proposing to drill more)
* uranium mining and milling leaves behind massive quantities of waste (tailings, discarded rock and chemicals) - the tailings (and even the waste rock) are radioactive and remain so for a very long time (76,000 years is the half life of radioactivity of uranium tailings; it takes 760,000 years for the radioactivity to return to natural background levels)
* the main risk from tailings centers on radioactive material being dispersed either through the air or through the water (surface and underground) - radioactivity unquestionably leads to cancers and other serious or fatal diseases (sometimes taking 15 or 20 years to manifest itself in humans) - children are at particular risk
* tailings are stored under water or sometimes under clay to try to prevent them from emitting radioactive particles into the air, and are dammed so the water-covered tailings don't leach into the groundwater or surrounding surface water - tailings must be managed until they are no longer radioactive (76,000 to 760,000 years) - tailings dam failures are common (there were 30 in Elliot Lake, and Church Rock, New Mexico had a state-of-the-art dam fail shortly after it was built) - but the mining company is gone after 10 to 15 years so who will ensure for tens or hundreds of thousands of years the site will be properly maintained, and at what cost, with the bills paid by whom?
* radon gas, a widely-recognized carcinogen (e.g., by Health Canada) that affects people and causes lung cancer even without uranium mining taking place, is also present at a mine site for tens of thousands of years -radon gas has been described by Dr. Edwards as a "polonium delivery system" - a means by which the lethal element polonium (a by product of radon gas decay) is spread by the wind onto the surrounding ground and water (a tiny amount of polonium was infamously used in 2006 to murder Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent, in London, England)
* we (Quebecers, Ontarians and Canadians) don't need any more uranium for domestic purposes - 80% of our production is exported, as will almost certainly be the case for a uranium mine in West Quebec - the four operating mines in Northern Saskatchewan could supply our domestic nuclear requirements for decades
* recent research by scientists on behalf of the United Nations has shown that massive investments in nuclear energy will only reduce greenhouse gases marginally - this means tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide will be diverted from efficiency measures and alternative energy sources which have both been demonstrated to have a more beneficial effect on greenhouse gas reduction than nuclear power
* countries like Germany and Sweden are decommissioning their nuclear power plants in a deliberate program to end nuclear power in their countries
One of the main questions that remain unanswered is this:
Why do we need uranium mines in Eastern Ontario/West Quebec, or anywhere else in Canada? There is no national emergency, no urgent need to extract it (there's lots of uranium available domestically already), and aside from a few (and I mean a few) local jobs for a very short period of time the only people who will benefit from a mine are the owners and managers of the mining company.
A mining company's benefit - its profit - will be made entirely at the expense of the regional environment and health of generations of people (us and our descendants) who live near the mine site. And it will be us and future generations who pay the virtually endless financial cost of maintaining the tailings site.
In our society it is business-as-usual to allow companies to form, produce their products and services, enter a market and make a profit. But most companies do not have such a profound and dangerous impact on the surrounding land, water, flora, fauna and people as uranium mining companies. To allow a company to mine uranium is not business-as-usual.
A uranium mine(s) in Eastern Ontario/West Quebec is a ticking environmental time bomb that will be an environmental hazard essentially forever. Citizens in the vicinity of mine sites and downwind or downriver will be living with the repercussions for generations (including Ottawa and Gatineau).
We, the voting public, have the power to stop this madness. But we must insist and persist in our demands for a stop to uranium exploration and mining from our local, provincial and federal politicians.
Don't let it happen. Take action now!
- Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Centre for Nuclear Responsibility
NEW ARTICLE
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies and author of the just released Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System (Fernwood, 2007).
NUCLEAR SMOKE AND MIRRORS FROM ALBERTA TO AUSTRALIA:
The AECL’s Advanced Candu and Bush’s Global Nuclear Partnership
By Jim Harding
A few weeks before Stephen Harper went to the APEC meeting in Australia, ready to discuss George Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), the Energy Alberta Corporation (EAC) in consort with AECL announced its plan to build two Advanced Candu Reactors (ACRs) near Peace River, Alberta. Harper, EAC’s Wayne Henuset and AECL’s mandarins won’t want the public to connect the dots too quickly. Harper’s minority government might not weather a heated controversy over Canada importing nuclear wastes while having a huge unsolved nuclear waste problem of its own. That controversy erupted in the Australian election campaign after the Howard government indicated it would consider buying into Bush’s plan to have supplier countries take back and reprocess spent fuel.
The Seaborn Panel, the 9-year federal review of Canada’s nuclear wastes, never investigated Canada importing nuclear wastes, and reprocessing these wasn’t even on its radar screen. Rather, it concluded that deep geologic disposal of irradiated nuclear fuel is not acceptable to the Canadian public and recommended that the management of irradiated fuel be addressed by a body at arms length from the both the nuclear industry and government. Instead, the Chretien government mandated the industry-owned agency, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), to deal with the issue. Under the NWMO’s announced plan, irradiated fuel is to be stored at existing reactor sites for at least a generation, i.e. 30 years, before being moved to a centralized location and possibly being reprocessed before the high-level radioactive residues are buried in a deep geologic repository. Such reprocessing would create a highly radioactive corrosive liquid even more dangerous than the solid spent fuel rods, and the extracted plutonium will remain extraordinarily toxic for over 800 generations.
The large nuclear reactors (ACR-1000) that EAC wants to build in Alberta are justified as an environmentally-friendly alternative to the natural gas that is currently used to heat the tar sands. The fact that the tar sands are the dirtiest of all fossil fuels discredits the nuclear industry’s PR about being the clean, magic bullet for averting global warming. That’s bad enough. If it became widely known there was a hidden agenda about an international nuclear waste dump in Canada, then all the hype about clean nuclear energy providing economic development might begin to fall on deaf ears. Besides, the ACR-1000 reactor is only a design on paper and hasn’t been reality tested. Without the $200 million granted to AECL from the Harper government for design work, adding to the $17 billion dollars of subsidies since 1952, there’d be no chance at all of this project ever seeing the light of day. (Such large handouts of federal taxpayer’s money could become a contentious issue, given Alberta’s populist ideology of self-reliance.) Serious design flaws have already been noted by the 2004 Safety Assessment done for the U.S.’s Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR); most notably the risk of a Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) and core meltdown after a power surge resulting from a large or multiple pipe breakage.
AECL’s 180 degree About-Turn
The original Candu designers prided themselves on using heavy water (the “d” in Candu) as a moderator and coolant, so that natural uranium (the “u” in Candu) can be used as fuel. No enrichment of uranium is required. But the new ACRs will use light water as a coolant, and for that reason they will require slightly-enriched uranium (SEU) as a fuel. Why the flip-flop?
The basic motivation is to reduce costs, but there is a darker side to what AECL calls the ACR’s “fuel adaptability”. AECL’s Technical Summary for the ARC-1000 says it is “ideally suited to burn other fuels such as mixed oxides (MOX) and thorium.” MOX is a code word for a blend of uranium and plutonium. But “other fuels” can also be used and these include irradiated fuel elements from Light Water Reactors (LWR) such as used in the U.S., France, Japan and elsewhere. According to Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, the ARC-1000 would be able “to make use of the “DUPIC” process, whereby spent LWR nuclear fuel is repackaged and used to fuel a Candu reactor.” The reason for this, he says, is that “the amount of fissile material (U-235 plus plutonium) in spent LWR fuel is more than enough to match” the requirements for SEU.
AECL is trying to put a responsible spin on this. It’s scientistic handlers used to assert that due to international safeguards there was no chance of uranium exported for nuclear power being diverted for weapons. Now they’ve created a new argument to market their “peaceful atom.” An AECL paper by nuclear engineer Jeremy Whitlock argues that the new Candu design will provide “unique synergism with LWR technology”, that it “can be used to disposition ex-weapons plutonium”, and, furthermore, that all this will be a “positive contribution to world peace.” The U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) disagrees, saying in its January 2006 statement on Bush’s GNEP, that “all reprocessing technologies are more proliferation-prone than direct disposal” of nuclear wastes.
AECL’s Unparalleled History of Botched Designs
The only advantage of the new Candu would be to the fledgling AECL. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the ARC-1000 to be up and running, for the list of botched AECL designs is lengthy. There was the Organic Cooled Reactor in Manitoba, which was an expensive dead end. There was the Candu Boiling Light Water Reactor in Quebec, which (without even including design costs) was a $126 million disaster. Then there was the Slowpoke Energy System, for which design work cost $45 million, which didn’t work properly. Next came the Candu-3, for which design work cost $75 million, which no one wanted. And the Candu-9, with design costs still secret, which was a no-go in South Korea. More recently AECL built the Maple Reactor at Chalk River, which threatens to become another technological and financial fiasco since the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is refusing to even license it for operation.
The Candu industry has been a sinkhole for the Canadian taxpayer. Each Candu reactor built so far has required refurbishing costs equal to the original construction costs after only half of its projected operating life. And after 50 years in business, AECL has only sold 12 reactors abroad. In 1996, to try to justify its huge taxpayer subsidies, it set a goal of 10 sales by 2006. But only 3 sales occurred, including the Romanian Cernavada plant from a 1980 deal, which required another $328 million Canadian guarantee; and two plants at Qunshin in China that received $1.5 billion in Canadian Account financing. During this decade AECL lost sales to Turkey, Australia and South Korea. With this dismal record, AECL has done a design flip-flop, turning its back on natural uranium fuel to try to cash in on the worldwide nuclear waste crisis. But we must be on guard. While AECL is opportunistically promoting ACR’s which can use irradiated nuclear fuel from other countries, after 60 years they still haven’t cleaned up their radioactive mess at the Manitoba Whiteshell Lab, and their plan for cleaning up their contaminated Chalk River Lab, costing millions more for the taxpayer, remains obscure.
Enter George Bush and his GNEP
Beholding to huge federal subsidies, AECL is also beholding to U.S. President George Bush with his $405 million brainchild, the GNEP. The only thing “global” about this plan is the U.S. pretence to world hegemony, which seems delusional after the Iraq debacle. And the only partners to this proposed “global” plan would be countries already in the nuclear weapons club, along with their uranium suppliers. The agreement would make it mandatory for uranium suppliers to take back spent fuel from reactors abroad. The bargaining chip would be allowing enrichment facilities and nuclear power plants that use spent fuel in these countries. Some chip. We’d get to throw more public money down the nuclear drain, create and store even more dangerous nuclear waste, and have less capital to create truly sustainable, renewable energy systems to avert even more catastrophic climate change.
Bush’s plan would be unworkable without the major uranium exporting countries – Canada and Australia - involved. Luckily for Bush, both countries are governed by neo-conservative parties that also oppose Kyoto. Bush is presenting the GNEP as a means to control nuclear proliferation, while making nuclear power available globally, by not allowing enrichment facilities, or spent fuel to remain, that could be used to produce weapons. (This finally admits that the Non-Proliferation Treaty is not an effective guarantee against proliferation from nuclear power plants.) The converse of this is that GNEP members would preserve a near monopoly on nuclear technology and weapons. No wonder, in the context of discussing billions living in inhuman conditions, climate change and the potential for nuclear holocaust, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. ElBaradei, in a Sept 03/07 interview with Der Spiegel, said “we are moving rapidly towards an abyss”. With a real sense of urgency, he said that, “in order to seem credible to the nuclear wannabe states we must demand steps towards nuclear disarmament from those who have nuclear weapons - an obligation that is stipulated in the non-proliferation treaty but is not complied with.” He goes on to deplore what he calls “this two-faced approach” since “If practically all nuclear powers are modernizing instead of reducing their arsenals, how can we argue with the non-nuclear states?”
More pragmatically, the GNEP would provide “a way out” for the nuclear powers, none of which has any fundamental solution to their own mounting nuclear waste problem. As the world’s major supplier of uranium, Canada, under the GNEP, could be required to take nuclear wastes back from the largest users of nuclear power – the U.S., France and Japan. The elements therefore exist for a dangerous nuclear expansion strategy in Canada. First, a Candu redesign requiring some uranium enrichment that can be used as a justification for importing nuclear wastes to reprocess as fuel, and then the tar sands as a justification for building this new generation of nuclear plants. And, finally, lest we forget, we have the huge Saskatchewan uranium industry supplying the raw material to the nuclear powers, which, under the GNEP, would require that nuclear wastes be brought back to Canada.
Nuclear and Kyoto: The Big Disconnect
The first I heard of Canada “repatriating” spent fuel was when AECL and Saskatchewan’s uranium multinational, Cameco, advocated this in the early 1990s. At the time they were both working towards an integrated uranium-nuclear industry. Now Cameco operates the Bruce Candu plants and a uranium refinery in Ontario, and, with a sympathetic Prime Minister from Alberta, AECL is trying to base itself in its north. It seems the AECL and Cameco were flying this trial balloon of us taking back nuclear wastes long before George Bush or Stephen Harper were elected. Could the tail be wagging the dog?
It’s no accident that the GNEP is spearheaded in countries refusing to support the Kyoto Accord. Kyoto sets targets for reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs), which mostly come from fossil fuels. However, business and government interests in oil-dependent countries (including countries like Canada, i.e. Alberta, dependent on exporting oil) don’t want anything to slow down their profit and royalty-gushing ventures. Meanwhile efficiency, geothermal, wind and solar electricity are proving to be the most cost-effective ways to quickly lower GHGs, which doesn’t sit well with the nuclear industry’s comeback strategy of stressing itself as the clean alternative to fossil fuels. Furthermore, the 2001 Climate Change Conference in Bonn rejected nuclear as a solution to climate change partly because nuclear will steal capital from the cheaper, less risky, more effective renewable alternatives. So the nuclear industry is primarily looking to the countries outside Kyoto for support. It helped when George Bush’s 2005 Energy Bill gave another $13 billion subsidies to the industry, and a privatized electrical market allowed U.S. nuclear plants to displace “stranded costs” on to the consumer. And it certainly helped AECL when the Harper government, continuing the Liberal practice of bailing out the nuclear industry, provided millions to design the ARC.
Harper’s government has tried to low-key its involvement with Bush’s GNEP, but we know from a Canadian Press Access to Information request that his government has been seriously involved in discussions about this since at least March 2006. While his aides, seemingly aware that this issue is politically explosive, tried to downplay the “secret agenda” item at the APEC forum, Natural Resources Minister Lund has been more candid. In reference to reprocessing spent fuel for new Candus, in the September 5, 2007 Globe and Mail, Lund is quoted as saying: “as the technology evolves, it’s something we’ll see”. The next day this was “corrected” and it reported that the Canadian government hadn’t yet decided on supporting such reprocessing. At the end of the APEC meeting, Harper’s Foreign Minister Bernier said that the Canadian government had just about decided about the GNEP. This is more smoke and mirrors, as Harper had already funded the ARC, which AECL promotes as being able to use reprocessed spent fuel, and his government has enthusiastically supported the ARC being built in the tar sands. All this from the man who so righteously attacked the Liberals for being unaccountable for far less consequential and less expensive matters.
Meanwhile the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA) is forthright about its support for enriching uranium and importing nuclear wastes. CNA President Murray Elston even uses the high price of raw uranium as a reason to support nuclear waste as the fuel of future choice. He continues the practice of the CNA providing disinformation to the public, saying in the Sept. 5, 2007 Globe and Mail that, “nuclear military powers have been reprocessing and transporting nuclear waste for years, and have proven it can be done safely.” Plutonium contamination at the U.S. Rocky Flats plant, France’s nuclear conglomerate Areva contaminating the North Sea, radioactive contamination of the Irish Sea along with detectable levels of plutonium in children’s teeth emitted from England’s Windscale/Sellafield reprocessing plant, and various weapons countries losing nuclear weapons grade uranium is apparently “safe” to the CNA.
Lessons from AECL’s Saskatchewan Shenanigans
We saw a similar process as what is now happening in Alberta in my home province from 1989-91, when AECL had another private company front the proposed building of a Candu-3 in our North. (AECL also tried but failed to sell its Slowpoke 3 to the University of Saskatchewan at the time.) AECL used every manipulative trick in the book, including inflating energy growth to make us fear we’d freeze in the dark without nuclear power. (They forecast a shortfall of electricity in Saskatchewan by 2000 unless a Candu reactor was built.) They wined and dined local politicians and businessmen on trips to Ontario’s Candus, as they are now doing with Albertans. And they tried to bribe us – during a slump in the economy - with the economic opportunities of a Candu-3 export industry based in our province. And they made no mention of the huge taxpayers subsidies that made it possible for them to float such grandiose schemes.
Under Grant Devine’s Tories, who privatized the uranium crown Cameco, AECL got the public utility Sask Power on side for a while, though their figures never jibed. At one point, as many jobs were promised from constructing one Candu-3 as came in total from the massive Ontario Darlington 8-reactor complex. There was lots of nuclear hype that got favourable coverage by the well-oiled and parochial provincial media. But, as with so many other AECL projects, the Candu-3 was never built, anywhere, as Saskatchewan people and third world countries alike rejected the contrived plan. And we are doing fine in 2007, with no black outs and no nuclear plants; though the Tory-like Sask Party and its Premier-in-waiting Brad Wall seem to think we should have one even if its not needed. We have a few wind farms, and, yes, uranium exports remain the bulk of primary energy production and export. The NDP government which spearheaded uranium expansion in the 1970s publicly opposes nuclear power without wanting to admit that they have been willing and essential pawns in the nuclear expansion strategy, which we now see taking shape with Bush’s GNEP and Harper’s compliance.
Saskatchewan and Alberta people are now interlocked in this geo-political drama. We will have to be vigilant about creating a future based on sustainable, renewable energy while phasing out the uranium-nuclear industry; or see both our provinces become the dangerous playground of a nuclear industry that expands by economic bribery and political bailout. |
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