HARDING: WEEKLY - Saskatchewan Sustainability

[Oscar]

How Might Saskatchewan’s Grass-Roots Respond to The UDP’s “Public Forums”?

By Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News on April 10, 2009

On March 31st, the Sask Party government’s Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) released its report “Capturing the full potential of the uranium value chain in Saskatchewan.”

With members of the very nuclear corporations that would benefit from nuclear expansion, the credibility of the UDP was already compromised.

There is something very disturbing that while it sat on the UDP, Bruce Power was distributing 50,000 copies of its 24-page booklet promoting nuclear power plants on the North Sask River.

The main owners of Bruce Power (Cameco and Trans-Canada), who would profit from uranium sales and transmission expansion, had additional seats on the UDP.

Talk about stacking the deck!

The government is trying to salvage the flawed process by holding nine hastily conceived “public forums” from May 19th to June 5th.

With recommendations to expand the nuclear industry already made, what influence can “public input” really have?

Is there any way to turn this political travesty into a rebirth of participatory democracy in our province?

The grass-roots will likely continue raising concerns about nuclear corporations being given the inside track on energy policy, as when 450 people attended the Save Our Sask (SOS) meeting March 9th at Paradise Hill, near Lloydminster.

The forums could be an opportunity to factually challenge the UDP and Sask Party promoting nuclear power as “green energy.” Recent polls suggest “greenwashing” is appealing to only about one-third of the population.

Nuclear corporations who have long promoted Saskatchewan as a nuclear waste site got their way with the UDP. But knowing public opinion opposes this, the Sask Party government quickly dissociated itself from this recommendation.

The grass-roots will likely remind Brad Wall’s Ministers that you can’t have nuclear power without nuclear wastes, and if nuclear plants were built here, as the UDP recommends, we’d become the target for a nuclear dump.

More information about radioactive tritium leaks at the Chalk River nuclear plant, the squandering of $400 million taxpayers’ money on two failed Maple reactors, and that medical isotopes can be produced in a safer manner, might take the wind out of the UDP’s recommendation that Saskatchewan get into the isotope business.

The UDP process is ass-backward.

The potential of us going forward on a sustainable energy path was never given a fair or objective consideration.

The UDP is primarily about creating a business expansion plan for the nuclear industry at public cost.

The upcoming forums therefore need to be independently monitored so that the views expressed aren’t misrepresented through the media to try to legitimize the UDP’s not-so-hidden agenda.

Preparing for these public forums could be an opportunity for those concerned about water quantity and quality, environmental health, nuclear waste, nuclear proliferation and the taxpayer being exploited to form networks to study and promote renewable energy and a sustainable society.

The influence of these sustainability networks would surely outlast the tainted influence of the UDP.

Next week I’ll look at how Sask Power’s budget and policy trends could make room for the UDP’s nuclear business plan.
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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies and writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for the weekly R-Town News chain.

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You can locate the UDP report and/or give input at
www.saskuranium.ca or mail your views to P.O. Box. 7, Regina, SK, S4P 2Z5.

Meetings are at Prince Albert, Buffalo Narrows, The Battlefords, Lloydminster, Yorkton, Estevan, Swift Current, Regina and Saskatoon.

[Oscar]

WHAT POLICES ARE BEHIND SASK POWER’S 2009 BUDGET?

BY Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News on April 17, 2009

It’s vital for us to know the policies behind Sask Power’s budget, otherwise we’ll be “kept in the dark”.

I finally got permission to interview Sask Power Vice President (VP) Gary Wilkinson.

CO-GENERATION:

What about the nearly $ 400 million spent for 341 MW’s capacity from gas turbines? I knew these could be quickly ramped up for peak loads, something the VP agreed nuclear can’t do. But I wanted to know why combined cycle turbines, which are more efficient because they co-generate electricity, weren’t used.

The VP simply said these would “take longer to get”, adding that, “perhaps in the future”, this would be possible at Saskatoon. (The VP later noted that “co-gen” purchase agreements from industry were approaching 450 MW capacity.)

I also wanted to know why these turbines were at Kerrobert, North Battleford and Saskatoon, and the VP was quite candid that this was for expected “significant oilfield and large pipeline loads”.

CONSERVATION:

It’s much cheaper to reduce demand than increase supply, so I asked: why there wasn’t anything in the budget on demand side reduction (DSM)?

The VP said we “don’t capitalize (that) here”.

I asked how much reduction in demand (and hence, in required future capacity) Sask Power was assuming, and the VP said “100 MW reduction by 2017.”

Sask Power is not known as a leader in DSM, and after talking to an energy efficiency expert, who said 20% reduction through DSM is “conventional wisdom”, this doesn’t seem to have changed.

I’ll explore this more fully in the future.

WIND POWER:

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation is forecasting 146,000 MW of wind and only 9,000 of nuclear, so I asked: why there was no wind power in the budget?

Wilkinson clarified there was about 200 MW wind, most from the Calvert government’s Centennial project.

I noted that with less potential wind power than us, Alberta was approaching 1,000 MW.

The VP said Sask Power was preparing a report on “wind deployment strategy”, but the Alberta level would be difficult on “our smaller grid”.

I have since found there are applications for thousands more MW’s of wind in Alberta.

KEEPING COAL:

Is Sask Power planning to keep us dependent on coal plants, which provide 55% of our electricity?

I wanted to know this as nuclear power is promoted as a “clean” alternative to coal. (I’ve discussed this “nuclear green-washing” in the past.)

The VP answered that we’ll need a “blend of technology” and “in the longer run we’ll need carbon reductions”, mentioning “clean coal and wind”. (Earlier he’d mentioned “run-of-the river hydro”.)

Though I raised this in the context of nuclear power, he didn’t mention nuclear in “the blend.”

Whether he hedged on this politically sensitive issue, I don’t know.

WHY CONSIDER NUCLEAR?

The communications officer jumped in saying “that’s it, time’s up”.

Since nuclear is the most expensive, and a fairly unreliable way to produce base load power, and this is all it can do, I was just about to ask: with coal clearly in ‘the blend’, did it make sense to go into nuclear? (On a Sierra Club panel I shared in Regina Jan. 15, 2007 a past VP, Rick Patrick, said nuclear power didn’t make sense for our small grid.)

My follow-up question was to be: whether the rationale for nuclear power was for exploiting the tarsands and creating a private export market, and whether capital costs for nuclear plants and transmission upgrades would have to be carried by the public?

Maybe next time!

Some things are clear: Sask Power isn’t being proactive about co-generation or conservation (DSM), nor is it embracing the trend towards wind.

Whether this is to ensure a market for privatized nuclear power, I can’t say.

This may depend on how the public responds to the nuclear industry- controlled Uranium Development Partnership’s push for nuclear plants on the North Sask River.

The UDP is holding meetings from May 19th to June 5th, so watch for these in your area.

There can’t be “prior, informed consent” if the public is kept in the dark about these matters.

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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for the weekly rural chain R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Most Still Say “Poorly Informed” On Nuclear Controversy

Saskatchewan Sustainability - by Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News April 24, 2009

Regina Leader Post’s recent poll shows those supporting nuclear power dropped below 50% while those opposing rose to over one-third. This is without asking about a particular site, which, when done about Lake Diefenbaker in a 2008 poll, showed more overall opposition.

Is there reason to believe the trend since 2006 toward declining support will continue? Some things stand out. Opinion is polarizing, with 28% strongly in favour and 24% strongly opposed. The nuclear industry has so far shaped the debate with their selective information, yet, with grass-roots self-educating groups emerging, comprehensive information is getting out. Add to this that only 22% support a private company (like Bruce Power) building a nuclear megaproject, which is down from 26 % last May; while those favouring the public sector (Sask Power) is up from 40% to 48%. And, most noteworthy, 40% say they remain “poorly informed” about the whole controversy.

The goal in democracy should always be “informed consent”. With 4 of 10 saying they remain “poorly informed”, these poll results can’t be taken as a sound basis for energy policy. The Sask Party government will surely interpret this poll as justification for steam-rolling ahead with ‘nuclear at any cost’. The appointment of the industry-controlled Uranium Development Partnership (UDP), which is about to hold nine public (relations) forums, shows the government didn’t want informed consent, but rather to manufacture it.

Those favouring sustainable energy face several challenges. They have to better make their case to the 19% who remain undecided, and try to convince the 20% slightly favourable to nuclear to reconsider. An international poll shows two big reasons why people not directly benefiting from the nuclear industry are considering this option: the climate crisis and energy independence. If more people realize that the high costs and slow construction of nuclear makes it an obstacle to carbon reduction and that renewable energy is already a reliable electrical source, with much more economic opportunity, opinion can shift further.

Cost will likely be crucial. The strongest (though also declining) public support in the recent poll is for uranium refining (57%), something the UDP has already ruled out as uneconomic. Yet, nuclear power is also uneconomic. Industry spokesmen have said capital costs per kW capacity were $2,500. Last May, Moody’s Investors said “all in” capital costs were more like $7,000, and since then the credit rating firm, Standard and Poor’s, says it could be as high as $8,000. This means a nuclear plant which was to cost $6 billion would actually cost $18 billion. The industry strategy is clearly to get public financing to support privatized electrical generation even though cheaper, less dangerous energy options are readily available.

Polls are just slices of opinion. It’s noteworthy that this time the Leader Post didn’t poll opinion about a nuclear waste facility, which a large majority has consistently opposed. With 48% saying they support nuclear power and yet, in a 2008 poll, the same percentage (48%) saying they oppose a nuclear waste dump here, much confusion remains. You simply can’t have nuclear power without creating nuclear wastes, 95% of which come from nuclear power plants. An informed debate about the nuclear controversy is clearly just at its beginning stage.

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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. He writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" in the rural weekly chain R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Wall Government Has Head In the (tar) Sand Over Climate Crisis

by Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability - R-Town News - May 1, 2009

Brad Wall’s government just abandoned its election promise to reduce carbon from 2007 levels by 32% by 2020. Environmental Minister Heppner said this target creates too huge a “burden on industry”, and the government is expected to adopt industry-supported intensity targets. But these just slow down the rate of growth in greenhouse gases (GHGs). As the Suzuki Foundation says, though industry reduced emission intensity by 6% from 1990-2004, emissions grew by 13%, and we urgently need major reductions to avert the climate crisis getting out of control.

The Sask Party is following Alberta, which is responsible for one-third of Canada’s emissions. Even with two billion to be spent on carbon capture, Alberta’s intensity targets could see emissions increase by 20% by 2020. Harper’s government, having also supported similarly ineffective half-measures, is now floundering over climate change policy.

How did we get into this mess? When the Chretien government signed the 1997 Kyoto Accord it promised to reduce emissions 6 % below 1990 levels by 2012. Harper’s government abandoned this, moved the benchmark from 1990 to 2006, and Canada’s emissions are now 20% above 1990 levels. We have done even worse than the U.S., which under Clinton promised to get 7% below their 1990 levels by 2012. Bush’s pro-oil administration sabotaged this and the U.S. is now 16% above 1990 emissions. Even with Obama’s quick policy turn-around his administration is only promising to get back to 1990 levels by 2020. As one of the world’s two largest carbon emitters they simply must do better.

Sask Party politicians seem to think we live on a different planet. They likely abandoned their promised carbon reductions as an incentive to multinationals to extract heavy oil reserves in the Kindersley and Lloydminster area. Part of the plan may be to publicly back private nuclear power plants along the North Sask River to provide energy for enhanced oil recovery and perhaps export. Compare this to Europe, where many industrial countries will achieve their Kyoto targets. Germany, a world leader in renewable energy, is on target to achieve a 40% cut in emissions by 2020, and the EU is ready to enhance its overall target to 30% reductions by 2020.

Like Alberta’s Premier Stelmach, Premier Wall is living an ecological fairy tale; for, as climate scientists tell us, a 2 degree Celsius rise in global average temperature could trigger what are called positive feedback loops involving the release of even more GHGs from permafrost and the oceans. This would fundamentally change climate - creating massive deserts and forcing farming to higher altitudes. A recent report from England's Hadley Climate Centre suggests even with rapid minor cuts we are on track to a 1.7 degree C rise in temperature by 2050.

The Sask Party government erroneously promotes nuclear as “green energy”, totally ignores the potential of renewables which can effectively reduce carbon, and then abandons its own carbon reduction targets to further attract the oil industry. Its emerging energy "policy", as promoted by its Uranium Development Partnership, is to add nuclear without phasing out coal to help fuel the very oil industry that perpetuates the climate crisis.

The public is starting to realize that this not-so-fancy political footwork is playing Russian roulette with our children’s future. It looks like the grass-roots may have to pull the politicians’ heads out of the (tar) sand.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. He writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for the weekly R-Town News chain that goes to over 400 Saskatchewan communities.

[Oscar]

Shouldn’t We Look at the History of Uranium Mining?

By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability - R-Town News - May 8, 2009

The Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) meetings in June are advertised as “The Future of Uranium in Saskatchewan.” This creates an impression that they’re about expanding uranium development, whereas the UDP is recommending we enrich uranium, build nuclear plants and create a nuclear waste dump here. For decades the nuclear industry’s business plan has been to expand the nuclear industry on the coat tails of uninformed support for uranium mining. Cameco, the world’s largest uranium multinational, owns Bruce Power, the private Ontario corporation wanting to build nuclear plants along the North Sask River.

Shouldn’t we look at the history of uranium mining before getting steamrolled into nuclear power and nuclear wastes? Shouldn’t we ask whether uranium mining has been the success story that the Wall government and corporate media claims? After three decades of study several things stand out.

1. All of the uranium mined here in the 1950s-60’s went into nuclear weapons. And though we don’t like to talk about it, the evidence is strong that the depleted uranium (DU) left from the enriching process abroad remains available for military uses (e.g. DU weapons).

2. Both uranium miners and communities nearby radioactive uranium tailings face greater health risks, including cancer; scientific evidence that there is no safe level of radiation continues to challenge permissible levels of exposure.

3. Once uranium is mined and milled, radioactive by-products in the tailings become more bio-available to contaminate watersheds and ecosystems. There have been major radioactive spills – at Key Lake (1984) and Wollaston Lake (1989) and ongoing containment problems will undoubtedly increase with time.

4. The benefits promised when the Blakeney NDP created its uranium crown corporation never materialized. Public investments far outstripped the revenue obtained. His government predicted revenues (i.e. royalties plus taxes) of between $127 and $83 million in 1982; the actual was $29 million. (Oil, gas and potash provided over $700 million.) Prior to his defeat in 1982 the now defunct Heritage Fund expended 17% of all resource revenues to expand the uranium industry, while less than 2% of its revenues came from uranium.

5. Since Cameco was privatized by the Mulroney and Devine governments in 1988, and the value of uranium sales skyrocketed, provincial royalties have remained flat. When sales reached $650 million in 1996, royalties were only $67 million. The April 18th Star Phoenix reports Cameco CEO’s “total 2008 compensation was just over $4.5 million, up from $3.7 million in 2007”. This was one-third of the $14 million uranium royalties to Saskatchewan in 2003.

6. Uranium mining jobs are promoted to provide Indigenous communities with economic opportunities. Yet, they never gave “prior, informed consent” and few benefits trickle down while they face the greatest burdens from the industry. Sustainable, renewable resources would provide many times more job opportunities without such long-term risks.

Uranium is a toxic heavy metal that gives off radioactivity until it stabilizes into lead in 4.5 billion years. No wonder B.C. and N.S. have banned uranium mining since the 1970s, and other jurisdictions (e.g. several cities in Ontario) are recommending this. We’ve never had this debate about environmental health here because the uranium industry started in secret as part of the nuclear arms race, and we’ve never looked back. Perhaps it’s time we did!

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and Justice Studies, and writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for the R-Town News weekly chain.
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"Right living is 'dharma' - the bridge between resources, 'arth', and human needs, 'karma'.
Dharma is therefore based on the sustainable and just use of resources for fulfilling needs.
Ecological balance and social justice are intrinsic to right livlihood, to dharma.
'Dharanath dharma ucyat' - that which sustains all species of life and helps maintain harmonious
relationship among them is 'dharma'.
- Vandana Shiva, from 'Soil Not Oil'

[Oscar]

Why Are We So Oblivious About The Hazards of Uranium?

By Jim Harding

SASKATCHEWAN SUSTAINABILITY – R-Town News - for May 15

Uranium is a water soluble, toxic heavy metal that emits radiation until it stabilizes into lead in 4.5 billion years. One of its many carcinogenic byproducts is radon gas, the world’s second cause of lung cancer. No wonder jurisdictions concerned about environmental health want to keep it from being spread into watersheds, food chains and human bodies.

Many places “leave it in the ground.” B.C.’s uranium moratorium from 1977 was recently reaffirmed. Nova Scotia has had a ban since 1985, and Labrador just imposed one. Twenty Ontario municipalities including Ottawa have called for a ban. Virginia has had a ban since 1983, the Colorado Medical Association is calling for one, and a U.S. federal authority has proposed a ban throughout the complete Grand Canyon watershed.

Why are we so oblivious to this? Is it because the Blakeney NDP government promised “untold wealth” from mining high-grade uranium as public enterprise? Because Cameco’s tax-deductible donations to health, education and cultural groups make us feel involved? Because uranium mining occurs far away from our towns and cities, near sparsely populated First Nations and Métis communities!

Perhaps we can get perspective from Nova Scotia’s 1982 Inquiry. In its Final Report Judge McCleave said “One could live near uranium, or one of the elements in its cycle, and not immediately recognize the hazards…the radiation from such sources has no taste, no sound, no form by which it can be see, and no ordour. Its damages can be devastating. This lack of taste, noise, sight and smell make it a formidable enemy indeed” (p. 17) Elsewhere he wrote, “The most common argument against the development of uranium holdings was the long-term management of the waste or tailings…since the problem raised is less than fifty years and the decay in the tailings is to last for tens of thousands of years, there is no absolute answer” (p. 27).

The public outcry that led to McCleave’s inquiry and the Nova Scotia moratorium was triggered by uranium exploration. The “free entry” of mining companies to stake on cottage, farm and Aboriginal land during the uranium bull market in 2008 also sparked the coalition to ban uranium exploration in the Ottawa Valley, as well as New Brunswick protests leading to changes to the Clean Water Act to protect drinking water sources from uranium contamination.

Here it’s “out of sight-out of mind.” The 1982 Charter of Rights and the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples require “prior, informed consent” for exploration to occur where Aboriginal rights are involved. But uranium mining was initiated here in the secrecy of the nuclear arms race. Aboriginal rights were then summarily ruled out of the 1978 Cluff Lake Inquiry, making Saskatchewan more appealing to uranium multinationals than uranium-rich Australia, where Aboriginal rights were considered.

It might have been different, for a moratorium was recommended at the Saskatchewan NDP’s 1976 convention, but proponents were out-maneuvered by Blakeney’s Ministers who were already negotiating uranium exports. With loyal pronuclear Commissioners, the Cluff Lake Inquiry was a safe “compromise” which ruled out the forthright investigation that led to Nova Scotia’s moratorium.

The imperative of sustainability requires that we look back with open eyes and an open heart, learn where things went wrong, and start anew. There is an opportunity to do this NOW. Let’s not miss it.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

[Oscar]

What Can We Learn From Rainforest Preservation?

By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability - R-Town News - May 22, 2009

The Amazon rainforest comprises six percent of the planet, an area in which Western Europe would fit. Eight countries share the Amazon. Having the largest part, Brazil is the world’s 4th biggest carbon emitter – three-fifths coming from deforestation.

The rainforests are called “the lungs of the earth”. Their environmental services - maintaining biodiversity (the web of life), regulating rainfall, as a massive carbon sink- have been ignored by corporations and government alike. The colonial-industrial ideology places more value in a tree that is cut rather than left standing; in crops from cleared land than in the land itself.

Livelihood for the 25 million people living in the Amazon is desperately needed, and sustainable harvesting makes more sense than deforestation. Supporting Indigenous people preserving the rainforest makes more sense than putting them in the bind where they have to help destroy the ecology to get transient jobs in forestry, mining or agribusiness.

The grassroots movement to preserve the Amazon continues to grow. Forty percent of the Amazon is now in protected areas and the rate of deforestation is slowing somewhat. Yet four percent of the Amazon has been destroyed since 2002, largely due to rising prices for bio-fuels creating economic incentives to clear more land. The absurdity of the market is stunning: to grow bio-fuels to replace the carbon emitting fossil fuels more of the rainforest is destroyed, emitting carbon, while driving food prices further up.

What does this have to do with us?

The Great Plains, or what we call the Prairies, stretching from Mexico to the boreal, are too arid to support forests. But, before massive agricultural clearing, this area was North American’s Serengeti, with tall and short native grasses home to millions of bison, to prairie grizzlies, wolves, foxes and birds galore. Less than one percent of the native grasslands remain in tiny disconnected patches where the Sprague pipit, sage grouse, lark bunting, uplands sandpiper and other wild birds struggle to survive.

Unbeknown to many, the Prairie region is the most ecologically transformed in Canada. The plow is the main factor; and agricultural chemicals pollute the food chain of humans as well as birds. No bird can withstand the loss of its habitat, so, naturally, many populations are in steep decline. As Trevor Herriot suggests in his book “Grass, Sky, Song”, we might wake up some spring morning to hear only the wind.

What is happening on such a huge scale in the Amazon has already happened here. Whether it’s a rainforest or a prairie ecosystem that is cleared for short-term economic gain, ecological damages accrue and the interconnected functioning of the biosphere suffers. We are learning some hard lessons about sustainable farming, like zero tillage, and more farmers are embracing organic practices. Shifting more meat production to free-range cattle and bison living on reclaimed prairie grassland would lessen the impact on habitats.

Ecosystems on which humans depend are globally interconnected in subtle ways often not grasped by expanding settler populations. For example, continued deforestation of the Amazon will undermine the rainfall upon which farming and food security depend from Argentina to the southern U.S. Achieving sustainability anywhere therefore requires us to better comprehend sustainability everywhere.

Next time I’ll take a hard look at the other massive forest on the planet, the boreal forest that connects Canada’s regions from coast to coast.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who resides in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

[Oscar]

Why Our Wellbeing Is Linked To The Preservation Of The Boreal Forest!

By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan sustainability - R-Town News - May 29, 2009

The boreal forest – named after “Boreas” the Greek god of the north wind – makes up one-third of the planet’s forests. And one-third of this is in Canada, where it covers one-half of the land mass from Yukon to Newfoundland. The boreal is mainly known for its coniferous trees which help provide shelter to over 80 species of mammals. Its’ one and one half million lakes are home to a wide range of fish, reptiles and amphibians; and its wetlands, which help filter the water of the planet, help sustain nearly half of North America’s bird populations.

However, ongoing fragmentation and loss of habitat is occurring from expanding cultivation, huge hydro and tar-sand projects, oil and gas pipelines and logging. According to the National Forestry database 900,000 hectares of the boreal are logged yearly. Only 10 % of Canada’s boreal forest is presently protected, while ecologists say at least 50% protection is required to ensure continued biodiversity.

Forest fires affect a much larger area than logging – about 2.5 million hectares annually. Only a third of the fires are caused by lightning, but these more isolated fires are responsible for four-fifths of the areas burned. Cyclical natural fires are known to rejuvenate forest health, but, with climate change, the number of fires is on the rise. Until the 1960s there were about 6,000 fires a year; it’s now up to 9,000. Climate change is increasing the intensity of fires and the length of the fire season, and warmer winters have contributed to the quick spread of the forest-devouring Mountain Beetles in BC and the Spruce Budworms on the east coast.

Though one-half the size of the tropical rainforests; due to colder temperatures and slower decomposition the boreal forest holds twice the carbon per area. A 1993 study estimates that Canada’s boreal holds 186 billion tonnes of carbon, making it one of the planet’s largest carbon sinks. This is 27 times the carbon released worldwide from fossil fuels each year. The boreal can hold as much as 100 times the carbon of agricultural land per area, which is why indiscriminant clear-cutting, or clearing for agribusiness or to grow bio-fuel crops, is so ecologically counterproductive. During the summers of extreme forest fires (e.g. 2002-2004), which are increasing, the carbon released approached 50% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon emissions leading to rising global mean temperatures increase the magnitude of forest fires, leading to even more carbon releases. This shows why we have to get better control of the impacts of industrial society on natural systems if we want to prevent these natural systems from getting beyond our control. Seeing Canada’s boreal forests narrowly, as an economic resource, blinds us to the truth that our fundamental wellbeing is linked to maintaining boreal forest health. To move towards a sustainable society Canadians may have to learn to see ourselves as a “boreal –protecting people”.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies and writes a weekly column "Saskatchewan Sustainability"for the R-Town News chain..

[Oscar]

Will UDP Consultations Enable The Public’s Voice To Be Heard?

By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability - R-Town News - June 5, 2009

Public consultations about the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) started with Saskatoon stakeholder meetings May 27th and 28th. It’s too bad no one from the Sask Party government was there to listen. Only presentations from nuclear companies, and organizations associated with the UDP, supported the UDP’s recommendations. Others were critical and called for non-nuclear, renewable energy options. Saskatoon media living in a “pronuclear PR bubble” seemed surprised that 27 of the 31 presentations wanted non-nuclear options.

It’s notable that non-nuclear sentiment was so strong in the city that headquarters the uranium giant Cameco. Consultation Chair, Dan Perrins, may find himself between a rock and a hard place as this trend continued at Yorkton, Estevan, Swift Current and Regina meetings. In his letter inviting public participation he said he’ll “…lead an independent consultation process, focused on the recommendations made by the UDP”, while stressing that he’s “not to be an advocate for the UDP report, but to provide opportunities for Saskatchewan people to share their feedback.” The process, however, is backwards for it forces people who support non-nuclear options to do this by way of criticizing the pronuclear UDP report. It would have been better to have an open inquiry, about all energy options, in the first place.

The consultation also has a limited mandate. The Terms of Reference given April 8th by Minister Lyle Stewart say that Perrins is to review “all written submissions from stakeholders and individuals” and to summarize “public input and feedback from stakeholders and citizens gathered through the Public Consultation Process.” If Perrins does this in an accurate and professional manner he’ll have to report the criticisms of the nuclear industry and indicate the magnitude of support for renewable energy. Yet the Terms of reference say Perrin “is not an advocate for or against the key findings or recommendations contained in the UDP Report”, and “will not make recommendations for further action …except to recommend further public consultations…”

Are Perrin’s hands therefore tied? Even after holding public meetings to find out what the grass-roots thinks of the pronuclear UDP, Perrins won’t be able to recommend on matters of energy policy, which is what these meetings are about. Also, the Workbook where people write comments on UDP recommendations is totally open-ended and the magnitude of non-nuclear views can easily be obscured.

It looks like the Sask Party government wants to appear to give the public a chance to comment on the UDP, but isn’t that interested in what people say. Prior to forming the UDP, in a September 2008 interview with the engineering and geoscientist journal, The Professional Edge, Minister Cheveldayoff said, “Part of the business plan for nuclear power in Saskatchewan would definitely have to include the export of power. We are talking to business partners and other provinces about the feasibility of that.” Below he continued, “…if we were to export power we’d have to upgrade the external lines as well. How much would that cost and would it be worth it? Those are some of the questions we’ll ask Bruce Power.”

Clearly the decision to partner with Bruce Power to consider a private nuclear power export industry was in the works before the UDP even existed. Because of growing public pressure to democratize energy policy, the Sask Party government created this public consultation process, but it is so restrictive that a widespread call for non-nuclear options could be ignored.

The billion dollar question is: will the grass-roots find a way to make their voices heard?


Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies and writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for the weekly R-Town News chain.

[Oscar]

Why Nuclear Workers Should Be Truthful About Nuclear Power

By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability - Published in R-Town News - June 12, 2009

I was recently invited to speak at a provincial meeting of the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) at Watrous. The other presenter was Dave Shier of the Canadian Nuclear Worker’s Council (CNWC). Unlike the Chamber of Commerce, many unions thankfully want to hear “both sides” of the nuclear controversy.

The CNWC formed in 1993 to “to build support for the nuclear industry.” Shier opened by saying he’d present “the worker’s perspective “. There’s no disputing there are high paying jobs in this industry, but defending self-interest isn’t a good incentive for balanced inquiry.

Shier’s pretense, to provide “practical information” to his “brothers and sisters”, was an attempt to make nuclear power seem benign. When talking of cooling the water used to keep reactor core temperatures from reaching 2,700 degrees C, where a meltdown occurs, he said it’s “just like the radiator in your car.” When discussing complex, layered and sometimes unpredictable safety features in a nuclear plant he said it’s like your electrical “breaker box”. When discussing decontamination he said it’s “just like cleaning water through a sewage plant.”

Shier never used the term “radiation” until the end of his talk when he simply asserted that workers are safe. The CNWC’s glossy 12-page booklet goes out on a limb, saying “No Canadian nuclear worker or member of the public has been harmed by radiation from a nuclear plant- ever.” This is unscientific propaganda. A study of over 400,000 nuclear workers in 15 countries done by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently found that Canadian workers had an excess risk of cancer (especially leukemia) even when radiation doses were within permitted limits (e.g. 100 mSv). Exposure from radioactive hydrogen (tritium) from Candu plants may account for this risk being even higher than elsewhere.

Shier admitted there’s major loss of energy over long transmission distances, and electricity should be generated close to end uses. Energy efficiency is even used in the CNWC booklet to argue that nuclear power has an advantage over far-away hydro dams. And yet Sask Party Minister Cheveldayoff has admitted that nuclear power makes no sense in Saskatchewan without being part of an export industry, which means there would be major losses of energy.

Shier reiterated the nuclear mantra that renewable energy can’t supply baseload electricity. This is either misunderstanding or disinformation, for, as the Chair of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently said “…if you can shape your renewables, you don’t need fossil fuel or nuclear plants to run all the time…plants running all the time in your system are an impediment because they’re very inflexible…if you have the ability to ramp up and ramp down loads in ways that can shape the entire system, then the concept of baseload becomes an anachronism.”

Shier used anti-privatization rhetoric, criticizing Ontario’s wind farms because they are “private.” When asked who brought him to Saskatchewan he reluctantly admitted the private company Bruce Power was involved. Also, one of the largest unions backing the CNWC, the Power Worker Union (the trade union at the Darlington, Pickering and Bruce Power nuclear plants) is, as the CNWC’s website says, ”part of the consortium of Bruce Power Inc. shareholders.”

Shier’s talk was full of such contradiction. He attacked coal-fired plants, the straw-man used to promote nuclear. Yet one of his supporting unions, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), recently signed an agreement to back Bruce Power’s push for nuclear power here in return for protecting jobs in the coal plants run by Sask Power.

Workers shouldn’t have to engage in such half-truths and untruths to defend jobs in unsustainable industries. Society as a whole must ensure just transition to sustainable technology. The pronuclear propaganda of the CNWC does a disservice to the intelligence of trade unionists and the public at large.
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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies and writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for the weekly R-Town News chain.

[Oscar]

Do We Need More Balanced Reporting To Democratize Energy Policy?

By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability - Published in R-Town News - June 19, 2009

What if 400 people attending a consultation meeting in the provincial capital were overwhelmingly in support of the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) pronuclear recommendations?

Based on the Leader Post’s long-standing pronuclear bias, this would likely warrant a front-page banner headline. But when the overwhelming majority at Regina actually opposed the UDP, it got a third page story, innocuously headed “Nuclear forum hears critics”. The story gave extensive coverage to the Chief Executive of the Regina Chamber of Commerce which was represented on the UDP.

Such bias pervaded the 5-part series “The Nuclear Debate” which ran mid-May in the Leader Post and Star Phoenix. When I went to the library to study this series I hoped I’d find some reference to independent research, but, alas, the practice continued of treating nuclear industry employees as the experts. In the first story, AECL employee and promoter Jeremy Whitlock, trivialized reactor safety issues by saying “Essentially a nuclear reactor is ‘just another heat source’, a steam engine than runs electric generators, in a similar way to a coal plant.” The spin of the second story, headed “Nuclear Power Use Growing Globally”, was justified with a quote from Jonathon Hinze, VP of UX, a nuclear consulting company. This is atrocious reporting. Had the Business Editor of the Star Phoenix, Joanne Paulson, wanted an independent source she could have gone to the “2008 World Nuclear Industry Status Report” of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. There she would have found that, even if all proposed nuclear plants are built (they never are), with the upcoming decommissioning of hundreds of existing plants, there is going to be a steady nuclear phase-out.

The third piece, “Nuclear Power Doesn’t Come Cheap”, used a seemingly more neutral source, Michael Moore of the Alberta Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environmental and Economy. But Moore was not that well informed; when he discussed economic impacts he was quoted as saying that the proposed reactor will have “a long life ahead of it – about 40 to 60 years…” This is pure promotional conjecture from Bruce Power, for no power reactor has lasted more than 25 years and the average age of the 119 reactors already shut-down was only 22 years. Furthermore, refurbishing reactors to make them last longer, as is now being done in Ontario, costs as much as original construction.

The main “expert” in the fourth story, “’Green’ Benefits of Nuclear Power Touted, Rejected”, was retired nuclear engineer, Bruno Comby, founder of International Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, who asserts that nuclear energy is greenhouse-gas free. (The Leader Post version had a less balanced head: “Nuclear Reactors the Answer, Advocates Argue.”) The writer, Jeremy Warren, quotes without question “facts” from Bruce Power’s feasibility study. Had he asked me, during an interview the evening before publication, I would have told him that I’d already traced Bruce Power’s “facts” to the Fusion Institute at the University of Madison, and found that its figures for carbon emission for various types of energy are cherry-picked from several studies; and, furthermore, that its figures for “solar” are for photo-voltaic (PV) technology, not for the much more cost-effective (and much lower carbon) solar technology which concentrates thermal energy to produce steam to create electricity.

The public has a right to learn about independent research on nuclear power. A few token quotes from those advocating non-nuclear options won’t make up for a systematic pronuclear bias. The big city dailies have access to Internet and can surely locate researchers such as Jacobson at Stanford, Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute, Storm van Leeuwen at the Ceedata Consultancy, or the U.S. Union of Concerned Scientists, as a start. The reading public deserves better balance in reporting on the nuclear controversy. Democratizing energy policy requires it!

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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies and writes a column "Saskatchewan Sustainability" for the weekly R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Can We See Through The Expensive Nuclear Spin?

By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in R-Town News - June 26, 2009

When you follow nuclear industry claims over decades, you become a bit “philosophical” about all the spin.

During the supposed “nuclear boom” of the 1980s, the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) predicted there would be 1,000 Gigawatts (GW) capacity worldwide by 1990. The actual amount was 260 GW – revealing a 400 % exaggeration factor. Two decades later the global capacity is still only 372 GW. Most revealing, even with all the hype about a “nuclear renaissance”, the IAEA’s 2008 prediction was for only between 447 and 679 GW by 2030. Indications are it will be even lower, for since 2005 the proportion of electrical supply from nuclear worldwide has slipped to 14% from 16%. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects it “will drop from 15 percent in 2006 to 10 percent in 2030.”

If our politicians would stop accepting as “fact” the pronuclear “news” fed to the big city dailies by the industry, and take time to read something like the “World Nuclear Industry Status Report” published in the Nov./Dec. 2008 prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, they’d find that we may be entering a period of nuclear phase-out. But politicians, too, live behind the Uranium Curtain.

The “Nuclear Status Report” includes an analysis of how many nuclear plants would be required for the industry to hold its existing share of the market. A very generous assumption was made that the 439 existing plants can be kept running for 40 years through expensive refurbishing. (The 119 plants already decommissioned only averaged 22 years). It was found that in addition to 20 plants under construction with a start-up date, there’d have to be 70 more plants on-line in six years (2015) and another 192 by 2025. Building 262 new plants by 2025 would require one new plant every one and one-half months to 2015 and every 18 days after that to 2025. It’s not going to happen!

The Uranium Development Partnership (UDP), however, wants to perpetuate the “nuclear bubble”.

What it calls “potential new nuclear capacity additions by 2020” is based on very tardy and manipulative “research”. It lists only 31 plants actually under construction, anywhere, and if you check the “Nuclear Status Report” you’ll find 11 of these have been under construction for more than 20 years. This is called “stacking the statistics.” The UDP then combines “anticipated” with “planned” reactors, a very unreliable category, to squeeze out 173 more possible plants. This includes 35 for North America, which is very farfetched, and an extreme example of the “400 % exaggeration factor”, for a recent assessment in the wake of the credit crunch and growing U.S. opposition to further nuclear loan guarantees, has only 3 new plants by 2015.

In small print we find the UDP’s sources include “press releases” and “nuclear industry publications”. We should rightly ask how, with $3 million funding from the public, the UDP was able to avoid doing original research prior to making recommendations now being brought to public “consultations”. Perhaps, since its 2009 recommendations are identical to those made back in 1991 in an AECL-commissioned report, the UDP didn’t feel it had anything new to learn.

The 1991 report, by the way, said, “From a strong uranium mining base, there is excellent potential for developing other areas of the nuclear fuel cycle in Saskatchewan, particularly enrichment, electrical generation, and used fuel storage”.

Sound familiar?

Is it “back to the future”?

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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice who writes a column "Saskatachewan Sustainability" for the weekly chain R-Town News..

[Oscar]

Is It Time To Listen To Our Nurses?

by Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability - Published in R-Town News on July 3, 2009

On June 23rd the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) presented its research on the health hazards of nuclear power to the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP).

The Regina Leader Post reported on SUN’s presentation; showing, from an international study, Canadian “reactor workers 7.65 times more likely to die from all causes of cancer compared to non-employees”, and from a Canadian study “nuclear power workers are 3.8 times more likely to die from radiation-related cancer than non-workers.” SUN’s research also found “children below the age of five that live within 5 KM of a nuclear facility are 2.19 times more likely to develop leukemia.” Summarizing what research has shown for decades, but has notably gone unreported until now in Saskatchewan, SUN said that “chronic exposure to low doses of radiation is associated with an excess relative risk of cancer mortality.”

In a poll of its 3,000 members SUN found only 9% supported nuclear power (62% were out-rightly opposed), and 90% had concerns about the health implications of nuclear power. SUN endorsed a non-nuclear energy policy and expressed concern that the cost overruns of a nuclear megaproject would siphon off resources needed for future healthcare.

Later that day the Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA), presenting to the UDP, assessed deficiencies in much of the research on radiation that the regulatory system relies on, saying “… a constantly shifting baseline suggests that the science is uncertain at best and based on theoretical models instead of population health at best. Where the health of populations may be affected irrevocably…this sense of uncertainly in unacceptable. We believe that health care standards should not be set by industry but by health care professionals.”

Later it continued: “All research suffers from a single universal flaw in that it is dependent upon industrial self-reporting of emissions.”

The SMA also discussed how methodological limits of some Canadian studies (e.g. lumping uncommon and more common cancers, failing to include miscarriage and stillbirth rates, and not being discrete about distances from nuclear plants) could contribute to relationships found between radiation and illness not being statistically significant.

Like SUN, the SMA looked at the definitive, German, study, showing “…an unequivocal positive relationship between a child’s risk of being diagnosed with leukemia, and residential proximity to the nearest nuclear power plant.”

The SMA noted that Ontario’s permissible level of tritium (radioactive hydrogen) in the drinking water is 350 times higher than that recommended by the province’s Drinking Water Advisory Council, and said “Of particular concern is…the paucity of research on the health effects of tritium which is released in larger volumes in Canada than anywhere in the world.” It noted a small 1991 study by the AECB (now CNSC) found a statistical relation between tritium exposure during pregnancy and central nervous system defects in children.

The SMA called for baseline health research and a branch of government fully separate from nuclear promotions to study the levels of ionizing radiation and the determinants of health of residents impacted by the uranium-nuclear system.

This is a repeat of what researchers called for back in 1978, during the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry. The work of the B.C. Medical Association on the risks of radiation played a role in that province declaring a uranium moratorium in 1977, and the Colorado state Medical Association is now calling for such a moratorium in its jurisdiction due to the health hazards of the uranium/nuclear industry.

The presentations of the SUN and SMA suggest Saskatchewan has a lot of catching up to do. It’s time we listened to our nurses.

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. His website is http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

CAN WE LEARN FROM NUCLEAR EXPERIMENTS ELSEWHERE?
By Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability - Published in R-Town News on July 30, 2009

The provincial government is promoting an expansion of the nuclear industry as an economic (“value-added”) strategy. It’s too bad it hasn’t taken time to study what has happened elsewhere before jumping on the nuclear industry bandwagon. The Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) even recommended that Saskatchewan offer itself as a site for nuclear wastes from nuclear power plants elsewhere, and undertake research on reprocessing this spent fuel. It concluded that “a Saskatchewan-based reprocessing facility may have substantial local and regional economic benefits” in part because “plutonium…has significant value as a fuel for nuclear reactors when refabricated into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel bundles” (p. 69).

There’s a lot to learn about this from where it has already been tried? In the 1950s, at Windscale, England, plutonium was produced for Britain’s nuclear weapons. Windscale became the site of the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant in 1956 and of the world’s first major reactor accident, a reactor fire, in 1957. Renamed Sellafield as part of a facelift, it now also has two nuclear reprocessing plants. Radioactive contamination of the North Sea has been ongoing.

In the 1990s, an additional plant was proposed to produce MOX fuel, a combination of plutonium retrieved from reprocessing nuclear wastes, and uranium, and to sell this as a “recycled” fuel for nuclear plants abroad. Because of the costs, and dangers that reprocessed fuel presents for nuclear proliferation, the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) was immediately opposed by peace and environmental groups. In 2002 Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth took the British government to court to try to stop the plan. With its misguided and hugely expensive love affair with nuclear power, Tony Blair’s Labour Party forged ahead on the pretense of being able to profit from a nuclear fuel market facing shortages of uranium.

Problems started right away. In 1999 it was revealed that quality control data on the MOX fuel was secretly being falsified. Britain’s main MOX customer, Japan, scaled down its purchases. When the plant opened in 2001, it only had 10% of the business that was forecast, and was plagued by problems producing the fuel assemblies. The Labour government continued to promote “recycled” nuclear waste as part of a “nuclear renaissance” even though, by 2004, there were clear signs that this experiment was to be an economic and environmental disaster.

British Nuclear Fuels (BNF) claimed the plant would produce 120 tons of MOX a year. Due to technical problems and the dearth of orders it only produced 5.3 tons in the first five years. BNF claimed the MOX plant would make net earnings of 216 million pounds over its lifetime, but due to unproven technology, exorbitant construction and commissioning costs, which have exceeded 1 billion pounds, the British taxpayers pays 90 million pounds a year to keep the plant operating. It’s one of the nuclear industry’s most embarrassing white elephants and one of the greatest failures in all of British industrial history. The taxpayer will now have to foot the bill to decommission this nuclear white elephant.

It may seem puzzling that British politicians swallowed hook, line and sinker the make-believe financial forecasts of the nuclear industry. But the same thing is happening in Saskatchewan. NDP mandarins have been fantasizing Saskatchewan becoming a nuclear “have province” since Allan Blakeney became Premier in the 1970s; and the Sask Party has also taken up the tarnished nuclear gauntlet.

Governments ought to do their homework to check nuclear promotions against reality where experiments have been tried and failed in places like Sellafield. If governments fail to do this, to protect the public interest, then the mainstream press should be seriously investigating these matters. Unfortunately, this isn’t happening, though thankfully a new generation of hands-on researchers is beginning to use the Internet to compensate for these failings. They are finding that things nuclear being promoted as avant-guard in Saskatchewan have already failed miserably elsewhere. Luckily the larger public is beginning to catch on.
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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice who writes a column "Saskatachewan Sustainability" for the weekly chain R-Town News.

[Oscar]

Why Aren’t We “Adding Value” To Sustainable Employment In The North?

SASKATCHEWAN SUSTAINABILITY – from R-Town News Aug. 28, 2009

By Jim Harding

We would be wise to look at the impacts of past uranium mines before getting carried away by Sask Party hype about the economic advantages of expanding into nuclear power. One of the earliest uranium mines, the Gunnar mine on the north shore of Lake Athabasca near Uranium City, operated from 1955-1964 to provide uranium for U.S. nuclear weapons. When the mine closed, it not only left a thousand workers unemployed but a legacy of toxic radioactive wastes.

The federal crown corporation, Eldorado Nuclear, operated the mine. When Gunnar was closed, its water-front warehouse was converted into a fish processing plant run by the federal Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. The fish plant operated until 1981, when it mysteriously closed. Speculation is that this was to avoid liability from marketing contaminated fish products, and exposing workers and families to toxic nuclear wastes.

No attempt was made to protect local people from radioactive wastes. In a 2006 brief to governments, entitled “For Our Children’s Children”, Fond du Lac’s Chief, Victor Fern, recalled: “The buildings were wide open and there were no warning signs. The mine shaft was probably about 50 yards from the processing plant and that was wide open, too. We used to climb that every day. There was no fencing or anything. Even the uranium processing mill was wide open, so we used to go in all these buildings, not knowing the dangers about radiation. Also the tailings pond where all the waste went, it was fine sand that we didn’t know was toxic waste, and we would go and play in there, not knowing.”

A 2001 report, ToxiCanada, by Minewatch and Sierra noted: “Unlike most developed countries, Canada has no national program to deal with contaminated sites. Abandoned mines and tailings ponds create toxic nightmares, contaminated rivers, lakes and surrounding lands. Local communities are left with the toxic legacy…” The Saskatchewan chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has added “…the impacts of waste rock, tailings and waste water are enormous.” Tailings in water-borne chemical slurry “are more susceptible to leaching or heavy metal poisons and acidification of the water. In the case of uranium mining, there is the added hazard of the radioactivity…”

When uranium mining was expanded in the late 1970s, the government claimed it would be state-of-the- art. Since then there have been major radioactive spills at Key Lake (1984) and Rabbit Lake (1989), and massive mine flooding at McCarthur River (2003) and Cigar Lake (2006, 2008). And it took decades for the federal and provincial governments to finally agree on cost-sharing a clean-up of long abandoned mines such as Gunnar. (Can you really “clean up” toxic waste that will be radioactive for thousands of years?) According to the Fond du Lac Denesuline Nation, it wasn’t until a few years ago that Saskatchewan Environment even posted signs “Danger – Do Not Enter – Radiation”. Based on past experience, the estimated $25 million cost to the taxpayer for belatedly decommissioning the main mine and its 40 satellite sites will prove insufficient.

In 2006, the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) completed its Gunnar Site Aquatic Assessment to help plan remedial action. It found “elevated radionuclide levels” in sediments and “higher uranium levels in the fish tissues”. It found that the “waste rock pile continues to be a source of contamination of Zeemel Bay”, in the St. Mary’s Channel, a large strait south of the Gunnar mine. It found “environmental impacts in Langley Bay (2 KM north of Gunnar) related to the historic tailings deposition”. And it found that Black Bay, originally isolated from Lake Athabasca by tailings but still connected to Langley Bay, “contains high contaminant levels” (pp. xvii-xviii).

Workers and residents have complained for years about increased illnesses, including congenital birth defects and cancers, though both levels of government deny any connection. No baseline or systematic epidemiological research has been done in the region. Cancer deaths are sometimes attributed to symptoms, such as “pneumonia”.

When northern NDP MLA, Keith Goulet, spoke at the Uranium Institute in 1997 he remarked: “Completion of the struggle of northern people to regain independence, by concluding the colonial chapter of our northern history, is now within our reach.” Governments continue to promote uranium mining as a way to combat northern underdevelopment and poverty, yet the outcomes, such as at Gunnar, look more like government sanctioning a continuation of colonization.

Because of this legacy of contamination and illness, the Denesuline people in the region are re-committing to restoring the traditional economy. And governments should support them. The broader public should be asking why there is so much emphasis on adding value to uranium, with its toxic legacy, while governments foot-drag on adding value to fishing, with viable, safely-situated fish processing plants in the north. Protecting lakes, fishing and other renewable resources, not the toxic, radioactive legacy of uranium mining, is the path to sustainability.

Next week I’ll look at how the “duty to consult” Indigenous people complements the quest for sustainability.
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Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley. His website is http://jimharding.brinkster.net