Nuclear Renaissance Threatens Canada’s Green Future: Environmentalists

Provincial and federal governments are looking to spend big bucks on refurbishing Canada’s aging fleet of nuclear reactors. Critics of the controversial energy source say such investment lacks vision and is unnecessary if governments encourage energy conservation and new technologies.

At the recent council of the federal meetings in Banff, Alberta, Canada’s Premiers discussed, among other things, Canada’s energy prospects. New Brunswick Bernard Lord sought support from his peers for a national nuclear energy strategy. Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty also expressed interest in the nuclear energy option.

Critics say such a strategy is a mistake.

“It’s just a very slow-burning nuclear bomb that boils water,” says John Bennet of the Sierra Club Canada. “It’s about the most round-about, inefficient and environmentally dangerous way to boil water that has ever been conceived.”

Canada’s nuclear industry earned a bad name through the 80s and 90s after many CANDU reactors had premature efficiency drops and technical failures. In 1997, Ontario shut down its seven oldest reactors because of safety concerns and poor performance. It was the largest long-term nuclear shutdown by any nuclear utility in the world.

Ontario’s nuclear reactors are also blamed for bankrupting Ontario Hydro and leaving Ontario residents to pay $20 billion in stranded debt.

But all that has changed, says Dale Coffin of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), builder of the CANDU reactor.

“Right now, the CANDU six line of our technology, which is our newest line of reactors, are among the top performing technologies in the world. In fact we have 3 stations that are in the top ten performance-wise in the world.”

Coffin says comparing the old reactors to the new is like comparing a black and white television to a high definition plasma TV.

None of the new reactors—built in Korea and elsewhere—have been on-line long enough to see what their final performance will be.

But even without cost overruns, Canadians are still sensitive about the by-products of nuclear energy – highly radioactive used fuel bundles that remain lethal to humans for a million years.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, a self-proclaimed neutral-on-nuclear-use organization funded by Canada’s three nuclear utilities, has been asked to give the federal government a nuclear waste management strategy that is palatable for Canadians.

The organization asked 15,000 Canadians what they could accept in terms nuclear waste and found safety and security were non-negotiable. The organization is recommending an “adaptive phased approach” that would see nuclear waste be buried deep underground and monitored for 300 years.

The cost? $24.4-billion.

“Canadians are hopeful there might be new technology that might render [the waste] less harmful to humans and the environment [in the future]” said organization spokesperson Mike Krizanc. There is also hope the waste may become a valuable resource to future generations.

Currently however, the waste is simply a liability. Besides risks to humans and the environment, spent fuel bundles can also be used to create dirty nuclear bombs.

The issue of nuclear energy use heated up with the recent announcement that New Brunswick will spend $1.4 billion dollars to refurbish their Point Lepreau reactor. The reactor generates nearly a third of New Brunswick’s electricity.

Marc Belliveau, director of communication for the department of energy in New Brunswick says the refurbishment is unlikely to go over budget like the Pickering Stations, which are three and five years behind schedule and four and five times over-budget.

Belliveau says the province decided to go forward with the refurbishment after AECL agreed to cover a portion of potential cost overruns this time around. AECL is the crown corporation that first built the reactor at cost overruns of 300 percent in 1983 and is heaviy subsidized by the federal government.

New Brunswick is also looking into energy efficiency projects and wind power.

“By 2016, 33 percent of energy use in New Brunswick will come from renewable energy, [We’re] taking more and more steps on wind energy and looking into tidal energy…. We’re also looking into making changes to acts that make it necessary to have more energy efficient appliances.”

New Brunswick will also create an energy efficiency organization funded by the provincial utility company. The new organization will aim to reduce energy use through efficiency programs.

Critics of nuclear energy, like Dave Martin, Energy coordinator for Greenpeace Canada, aren’t buying New Brunswick’s pledge to energy reform.

“I’ve heard all this before and the fact is if a utility makes an overwhelming investment in nuclear power, that money will not be spent on either conservation or renewables.”

Martin suggests that old-style utility companies have a hard time adapting to the decentralized nature of conservation efforts. While the companies are very good at developing large centralized generating stations, they have a harder time adapting programs that depend on “thousands of small efforts, sometimes tens or hundreds of thousands of small efforts.”

Martin is concerned that by investing large amounts of money in nuclear energy, New Brunswick will be less inclined to move towards conservation.

The refurbishment may even be unnecessary. In 2002 the Sierra club commissioned a study of Canada’s energy use and found that with conservation and energy efficient technologies that were already marketable on a large scale, Canada could easily meet Kyoto protocols and eliminate nuclear and coal-based energy use.

“If we approach [the energy issue] with the right technology and regulations, we don’t need these nuclear reactors,” says John Bennet, Director of Climate Change and Energy for the Sierra Club of Canada. Bennet notes that although there could be some problems with the west to east electricity transmission, with wider use of new technologies like co-generation, Canada could still maintain all exports of electricity and gas.

Bennet says provincial governments need to legislate better building standards for new homes. This would include better insulation and energy-efficient appliances. Currently the average refrigerator uses one third of a home’s electricity and new energy efficient fridges could cut that down by half.

Home builders have resisted any proposed legislation saying it could hurt the market, an argument that seems less reasonable as real-estate prices continue to rise and the cost of better houses is around $5000.

“It doesn’t cost anything to be more efficient, we do have to make some investment, but when you make that investment … it pays off in a return,” says Bennet.

Martin agrees. He recently invested $10,000 dollars refitting his home with a solar hot water system. He says the system will pay for itself in ten years. His last gas bill was under $3. While admitting it was summer and he was not paying for heating he says that gas use covered his gas clothes dryer, stove, oven and barbeque.

However, there are obstacles to the acceptance of these new technologies.

“Even though it makes economic sense and you save money with the technology [such as compact fluorescent light bulbs], most people don’t buy them because you have to put up more money upfront.”

To usher in the popular use of these new technologies, new-energy proponents say Canadians need regulatory help, incentives and systems to finance energy efficient technology.

In Martin’s case, the solar hot water system could have been financed by a green energy corporation while he was billed slightly less than his regular gas bill. After 10 years the system would be paid for, including interest on the loan.

“Conservation and energy efficiency technologies make sense and save money,” says Martin. “It’s not just about being altruistic about the environment.”