FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 28, 2011
Greens say no to nuclear dump, yes to locally-generated job creation in northern communities
La Ronge, Saskatchewan - If elected to the Legislature on November 7th, Green party MLAs would immediately act to introduce legislation to ban nuclear waste storage in the province.
This would help Saskatchewan catch up with Manitoba, which banned nuclear waste storage in 1989, and would go further, outlawing the transport through Saskatchewan of high level nuclear waste.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is in discussion with the communities of Pinehouse, Patuanak (English River) and Creighton about the construction of a facility to store highly radioactive waste from the five nuclear reactor sites in eastern Canada. There is no known way of reducing the radioactivity of this waste, which will continue to be a risk to human health for hundreds of thousands of years.
The Green Party wants to ban nuclear waste storage because:
(1) At the present time there is no certainty that nuclear waste can be safely contained. The science being used to justify the NWMO's plans is incomplete. Says deputy leader Dr. Mark Bigland-Pritchard, "Their science is not watertight, and, according recent research, neither are the NWMO's proposed canisters. Once a radioactive leak has begun, it will be virtually impossible to stop. " (see backgrounder below)
(2) This nuclear waste is southern Ontario's problem, not ours. Power reactors in Ontario (90%), Quebec and New Brunswick take ordinary uranium and change it into substances thousands of times more toxic than the original. This is not Saskatchewan's responsibility, and it is irresponsible to pose this threat to the people and ecosystems of Saskatchewan.
(3) Transporting the waste from Ontario puts far too many people at risk along the route. It would need to be trucked across Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan to the dump site - an average of 12 shipments per week for at least 30 years. How can the NWMO guarantee that there will be no accidents? Can they promise that human error or criminal action will never breach the security of the canisters holding these lethal materials? The most likely shipping routes pass through Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert. This puts the majority of the province's population at risk -- in addition to the northern communities close to the proposed site.
(4) The proposed respository depends heavily on planning, skills and staff from Ontario. It is unlikely to provide more than a few permanent local jobs. Northern Saskatchewan is the second poorest area in all of Canada: large mining corporations based in southern Canada or overseas have failed, despite many promises, to bring prosperity. Says Bigland-Pritchard, "Uranium mining companies have been in the north for decades, and they have created very few local jobs. Do we have any reason to believe that the NWMO would do any better?"
Therefore, the Green Party stands with those who are resisting the nuclear dump proposal - and especially commends the work of the Committee for Future Generations, whose anti-dump petition has already been signed by the majority of Pinehouse residents.
When asked what the Green Party would do for the north instead, Bigland-Pritchard said: "Northerners have been telling us that their route to prosperity must be consistent with their traditional understanding of the land. Projects should be planned at a local level but with adequate start-up resources from the provincial government. There are tremendous income generation opportunities in value-added forest products, fish processing, tourism and adventure camps, sustainable forestry, and green energy from forestry residue, solar and wind."
Nuclear power generation too costly and dangerous
The Green Party also opposes any plan to develop nuclear power reactors for Saskatchewan. The cost alone should rule out the nuclear option. A 2009 price quote in Ontario came in at more than 20 cents per kWh - Saskatchewan householders currently pay just over 10 cents per kWh. In addition to the cost, nuclear power also poses a major threat to human health. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants in Japan are still releasing radioactive poisons on a large scale seven months after the original accident. Thousands of people evacuated from their homes will probably never be able to return.
Rather than put the people of Saskatchewan at such risk, the Green Party would roll out an aggressive programme of energy efficiency and a rapid transition to safe, clean, sustainable energy. It encourages all those who share this vision to vote with their consciences on November 7th.
Contact:
Mark Bigland-Pritchard, Deputy Leader, Green Party of Saskatchewan
mark@lowenergydesign.com (306) 827 7431
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Background information on the technical inadequacies of nuclear repository design plans
(summarized from Helen Wallace's September 2010 Genewatch UK report, Rock Solid? - A scientific review of geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste)
- Copper canisters containing spent nuclear fuel could corrode more quickly than expected: the chemistry of their reaction with groundwater is still unsettled.
- Any repository will be subject to intense heat generated by radioactive decay, and to chemical and physical disturbance due to corrosion, gas generation and biomineralization. This could impair the ability of backfill material to trap radioactive pollutants.
- The same physical, chemical and biological factors will result in a build-up of gas pressure in the repository. This could damage the barriers and force fast routes of escape for dangerous radioactive substances through rock fractures.
- Poorly understood chemical effects, such as the formation of colloids, could speed up the transport of some of the more toxic radioactive elements such as plutonium.
- The distribution and movement of underground water is not well understood in northern Saskatchewan. If rock fractures or faults go undetected, or if existing computer models are inadequate to explain how water and gas will flow through them, this could lead to the release of radioactive substances in groundwater much faster than expected.
- Excavation of the nuclear waste repository cannot avoid damaging adjacent zones of rock - thereby creating fast routes for radioactive escapes.
- The waste repository has to be designed to last for thousands of years. Future civilizations, seeking underground resources or storage facilities, might accidentally cause damage in a number of ways - faulting of the rock, rupture of containers and penetration of surface waters or permafrost, leading to failure of the barriers and release of the toxic waste.
