Time Immortal

It would seem that plans to build a nuclear plant in Alberta, to reduce both the province’s dependency on fossil fuels (especially coal) and address its growing energy needs, has been advanced another step or two with the selection of a site — a stretch of private land 30 kilometres west of Peace River, on Lac Cardinal.

Predictably, though, the plan is meeting opposition from environmentalists:

“The nuclear power industry has a long history of over-promising and under-delivering, so I’m skeptical,” said Marlo Reynolds, executive director of the Drayton Valley-based Pembina Institute.

In what way has the industry “under-delivered”, precisely? Ontario has been operating CANDU nuclear reactors for many years now, and these are consistently ranked as among the best units in the world for performance. Alberta would be installing the latest versions of these capable reactors for which there is global demand, albeit on a larger scale than any single facility in Ontario.

“I’m still not convinced there’s a need for nuclear power given all the other resources we have here in Alberta.”

So now that nuclear power is on the table and seriously being considered, fossil-fuel-fired power generation (which releases a much larger quantity of environmental pollutants, even with modern filtration systems and emissions standards, than nuclear power generation does) is a good thing? Coal, oil, and gas are now preferable?

Or is he referring to wind, solar, and hydro power, all of which are vastly more expensive, produce considerably less energy on a dollar-for-dollar basis, and cause different environmental problems that, with the possible exception of the impact of solar power generation, are just as bad (if not worse, if one thinks of the ecological damage that a dam creates with the creation of its accompanying lake) as that of any fossil fuel?

“That business case has never been made clear… once you factor in the full environmental cost I don’t believe nuclear power competes.”

David Schindler has serious concerns, too.

“There are huge issues involved in building this,” says Schindler, a professor of ecology at the University of Alberta who teaches environmental decision-making, “and one of them is reactor safety.

“I would want to know where the waste is going to be stored, how it’s going to get there and what the use of the power is supposed to be for.

The major environmental issue associated with a properly functioning nuclear plant is the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. And, as the recent discovery of natural nuclear reactors in Oklo, Norway, has demonstrated, deep geological formations (of the sort one might expect to find in, say, the Canadian Shield) are effective barriers for the isolation of nuclear waste. Isolation, mind, in such fashion as to prevent nuclear contamination of the surrounding environment. Canada is a key innovator in this field.

As for reactor safety, CANDUs are among the safest — if not the safest — reactors in the world, with comprehensive and multi-layered failsafe systems in place to prevent the reactors from getting out of control. They are used in numerous countries around the world, and to this blogger’s knowledge have never suffered a catastrophic failure in any of those places.

All this is not to say that the environmental implications of installing a nuclear plant are minor, or that they should not be considered. But there’s a fairly distinct line between reasonable concern and alarmism, and environmentalist groups rarely stay on the “reasonable” side of it where nuclear power is concerned.

If the people of Alberta — and especially its environmentalists — are concerned about Alberta’s ability to generate sufficient quantities of electrical power in a way that minimizes harmful environmental impacts and emissions, nuclear power is the only realistic alternative to turn to. Put plainly, Alberta needs this development to go forward.

And I’m all for discussion of the environmental impact of the project — I think that’s an important consideration. But that discussion has to be carried out with straight, accurate facts, not the distortions of the fearmongers and naysayers.