WILL HAITI BE REBUILT SUSTAINABLY?
BY Jim Harding
Punlished in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan Feb. 12.10
It’s more than a month since the powerful earthquake left Haiti devastated. We’ve all seen images of bewildered people, barely recovering from a rash of hurricanes in 2008, clawing in the rubble of sub-standard houses looking for loved ones.
The cameras have now gone to the next “breaking news”, but hopefully we’ve seen too much to be able to forget Haiti. Anyway, images of desperate people scavenging in the stench of death don’t tell us why this is happening. An aerial view explains much more, showing the island dissected by the impacts of centuries of colonization – especially widespread deforestation from cash-cropping, which is primarily on the Haitian side.
HAITI’S HISTORICAL VULNERABILITY
The 7-Richter scale earthquake is why the cameras came, but the carnage and ongoing vulnerability are as much a human failure as a natural disaster. On the other side of the island, where the Dominican Republic formed in 1844 as a break-away state, things go on pretty much as usual. While we watched from afar, worrying whether grieving survivors will even have a tent to live in, the Dominican Republic made sure that none of its 600 hotels were used to house any of the million homeless, because this would threaten the lucrative tourist industry.
If we are going to turn the corner on creating sustainable societies we’ll have to peel away centuries of layers that allowed this most recent Haitian disaster to take such a toll. They go way back. When Columbus sailed there the island was inhabited by the Taino people. How their lives were changed! In 1697, after a long period of brutal Spanish exploitation, the western part of the island of Saint Dominique was ceded to France. Over decades the French commercial empire stole one-half million Africans from their homeland, forcing them into slave work on lucrative sugar and coffee plantations on this colony. The slave traders stole Africans from a diversity of tribes so they couldn’t communicate easily; the unique Creole language in Haiti may trace back to a tribe in what is now Senegal.
The French colony became the richest of all, but the slaves were kept impoverished. In 1791, after more than a century of this inhumanity, the slave population revolted; and by 1804 the revolt had created the first black state on the planet. Haiti was born. Haiti’s independence from French colonialism followed after the US war of independence against British colonialism. The US and Haiti were the first two independent nations in the western hemisphere. How is it that one became the richest and the other the poorest in the hemisphere?
Rather than American solidarity for Haiti, the US imposed a trade embargo, and it was 60 years before it recognized Haiti’s independence. In 1825 the French demanded compensation from Haiti for losses from the slave economy and Haiti’s long-term indebtedness locked it into underdevelopment. In 1915 the US marines invaded Haiti to protect US economic interests that replaced those from France. In 1957, riding a wave of nationalist sentiment, the “Papa Doc” Duvalier took power and this brutal rule lasted until his son was overthrown in 1986. Populist priest-politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in 1991 on a program of abolishing poverty and destitution, but in 1994 the US again occupied Haiti to protect American economic interests. Aristide was re-elected twice but was replaced, with Canadian support, by a military-backed president. In 2004, on Haiti’s 200th anniversary, before his exile to South Africa, President Aristide called on France to pay restitution of several billions for the century-long pillage of the country. France never replied.
A HUGE DISSCONNECT
The devastation can’t be grasped by the January 12th earthquake alone. The story-line of the western media, however, has been about creating security for aid workers, the threat of looting, the recovery of 150 people by 27 international rescue crews, and the widespread generosity of celebrity-starring benefits. Of course those watching the devastation from afar are moved to acts of compassion. But the millions of donors are not naïve; they know that open-hearted generosity doesn’t ensure resources get to people on the ground.
And much carnage resulted because Haiti, the poorest of the poor countries, doesn’t have the infrastructure to launch an effective rescue mission. Even the UN, which suffered casualties, had to try to coordinate humanitarian aid with its headquarters collapsed. It apparently hasn’t gone that well. While the US took over control of Port-au-Prince’s airport and a massive US navy hospital docked offshore, people continued to die because there weren’t trucks to move emergency and medical aid to outlying areas. The disconnect between the mammoth show of technology and the failure to meet simple human needs has been glaring.
To realize the scale of devastation, imagine half the population of Saskatchewan either dead (200,000) or injured (300,000). Three times our population, one-third of Haiti’s, will require long-term assistance to survive. Within a week, without funerals, 75,000 bodies were buried in “body dumps”, because there was nothing else to do. How many of these dead would be alive if Haiti had not been left to suffer its legacy of underdevelopment after centuries of colonialism? Or if it had not been forcibly stopped by outside economic interests from making the reforms required to lift its people out of such hardship? How many would be uninjured if the Haitian people had enough democratic influence to enforce standards of construction used elsewhere that would better endure the quake?
How many of the children who have had limbs amputated would still be running and playing if the medical services had gotten to them in time; before injuries turned into infections and then into untreatable gangrene? The media has focused a lot on the 50,000 children orphaned in the aftermath of the quake. There were already 380,000 orphans in Haiti before January 12th, many of them living in sub-standard buildings which did not withstand the shock.
Of course the needy must be helped regardless of this historical legacy. But will the aid go to Haiti in such a way that an infrastructure, economy and democracy is built that doesn’t leave the majority of the population so powerless and vulnerable when the next natural disaster comes?
Past columns are available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
HARDING: WEEKLY - Saskatchewan Sustainability
WILL HAITI BE REBUILT SUSTAINABLY?
by Oscar » Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:02 pm
- Oscar
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CAN DISASTER POINT US TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY?[/
by Oscar » Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:06 pm
CAN DISASTER POINT US TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY?
By Jim Harding
Published in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan Feb. 19.10
Sustainability requires changes in how we think about the larger world. We all suffer from some attention deficit; not surprising after we’re inundated by information-overload about one event which miraculously disappears as another fills the airwaves. Remember Haiti, where an estimated 230,000 people died in the aftermath of an earthquake only five short weeks ago? Where more than a million dislocated people presently face the spring rains living in flimsy shanty-towns? It’s getting a bit blurry, isn’t it? Especially after several weeks of “news” about Toyota recalling eight million cars, and our TV screens now being filled with the winter Olympics! Do we even remember Copenhagen?
The Olympics is a $6 billion event to highlight 2,700 athletes while creating a massive commercial audience for un-athletic food and drink giants McDonalds and Coca Cola. To put this in perspective, only $3 billion will be expended even if (a big “if”) all donors come through for Haiti’s reconstruction, which is necessary to bring three million people back from the edge of destitution and despair. I’m not suggesting anyone feel guilty about the priorities and discrepancies. But we should feel something, for sustainability will require us to have better staying power; to better comprehend the deeper truths that lie beneath the fleeting cameras.
QUESTIONING ELITE PANIC
And there’s still much to learn from Haiti.
What happens when governance collapses after such devastation? Do the mass of people panic, fend for them self and threaten public safety? Does the rescue mission and effective distribution of medicine and aid depend on establishing military order? Or, might the mobilizing of civil society make for more effective reconstruction?
The way disasters get reported from an outsider perspective easily reinforces the law and order rather than humanitarian view. The voice-overs to the photos often encourage us to see a cauldron of violence lying below the injured and grieving people desperately looking for ways to survive. Even block-buster disaster movies depict panicky masses as a backdrop to outsider superheroes. Research on disasters, however, suggests that for the most part, ordinary people, often already living with much insecurity, don’t panic. Of course people want to be helped, and they get angry and cynical when help promised during peak TV coverage isn’t actually delivered. But on-the-ground help by those who stay is always appreciated. There is lots of tender hearted loving care occurring on the front lines as I write.
Panic is often generated by the country’s elite who are nervous about the collapse of authority. This “elite panic” sees the breakdown of customary controls as a threat to relative privilege. This isn’t to say that people with more wealth aren’t generous in such devastating circumstance. One Haitian man who owned land where homeless families went to squat commented “I won’t throw them off, because they have no place else to go.” But what happens in a few months or years?
Elites often have direct access to donor countries and aid agencies, and re-establishing control rather than immediately meeting human needs can take political priority. This can lead to the militarization of aid. This doesn’t have to be either-or, if security is clearly tied to delivering aid, but when the military takes charge this becomes more difficult. People easily get confused about what’s happening.
Public safety is enhanced by working directly with the people in need. Experience after tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes shows people are generous, resourceful and brave in helping rebuild their community. Though hurt, shocked and deprived, people are extremely resilient in acting for the common good. By the time a rescue mission got to one isolated community outside Port-au-Prince, the local people had self-organized to dig out survivors, bury their dead and build alternative shelter. Meanwhile the outside media was highlighting looting. How can scavenging for bits of building material or food in the aftermath of such total devastation be described as “looting”?
Aid sometimes gets bogged down in its own bureaucracy. While stocks of canned food piled up at the airport there was fresh food available at some Haitian markets which aid agencies could have bought and distributed, while helping restore the local economy. Rebuilding efforts after the 2004 tsunami show partnerships between aid groups and villagers is the most effective way to build sustainable shelter. The simple act of giving thousands of low-cost wheel-barrels to Haitians had a more positive effect than sending in more high-cost troops. The wheel-barrels acted as stretchers to get injured to field clinics, and allowed those scavenging to better distribute reusable material.
BEYOND DISASTER CAPITALISM
Human resilience grows into the empowerment essential for rebuilding. This strengthens civil society so that governance can become more participatory and democratic. Unfortunately this threatens vested interests who want to profit from reconstruction; to have top-down controls and their privilege return. So the processes used will shape the political and economic outcome, and elite panic and militarization of aid won’t leave behind a more participatory society.
Naomi Klein’s best seller, The Shock Doctrine, documents the corporate readiness to exploit in the aftermath of disaster. The book has hit a nerve, but its attempt to cover everything from the Chilean coup in 1973, to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, to Hurricane Mitch in 1998 makes it a bit of a stretch. To learn the lessons of sustainability we’ll need to balance this view with one that explores the capacity of the grass-roots to take control of their grave situation. In “A Paradise Built In Hell”, award-winning historian, Rebecca Soinit, describes how in the aftermath of disaster people can rebuild their society as they rebuild their lives. One reviewer put it well, saying the book disputes “civil defense planners, media alarmists and Hollywood directors who insist that disasters produce terrified mobs prone to looting, murder and cannibalism unless controlled by armed forces and government expertise.” After exhaustive research on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, 1917 Halifax explosion, 1985 Mexico earthquake, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, Soinit concludes that there is spontaneous altruism, self-organization and mutual aid among neighbours and strangers. She argues that such human solidarity points the way to a freer society.
We don’t want to depend upon disasters to fully appreciate humanity’s resilience. Climate change and militarization won’t always provide second-chance learning opportunities, so sustainability is going to require more collective foresight.
Next time I’ll look at how well we’re doing so far in our 21st Century.
~ ~ ~ ~
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley. Past columns are available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
By Jim Harding
Published in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan Feb. 19.10
Sustainability requires changes in how we think about the larger world. We all suffer from some attention deficit; not surprising after we’re inundated by information-overload about one event which miraculously disappears as another fills the airwaves. Remember Haiti, where an estimated 230,000 people died in the aftermath of an earthquake only five short weeks ago? Where more than a million dislocated people presently face the spring rains living in flimsy shanty-towns? It’s getting a bit blurry, isn’t it? Especially after several weeks of “news” about Toyota recalling eight million cars, and our TV screens now being filled with the winter Olympics! Do we even remember Copenhagen?
The Olympics is a $6 billion event to highlight 2,700 athletes while creating a massive commercial audience for un-athletic food and drink giants McDonalds and Coca Cola. To put this in perspective, only $3 billion will be expended even if (a big “if”) all donors come through for Haiti’s reconstruction, which is necessary to bring three million people back from the edge of destitution and despair. I’m not suggesting anyone feel guilty about the priorities and discrepancies. But we should feel something, for sustainability will require us to have better staying power; to better comprehend the deeper truths that lie beneath the fleeting cameras.
QUESTIONING ELITE PANIC
And there’s still much to learn from Haiti.
What happens when governance collapses after such devastation? Do the mass of people panic, fend for them self and threaten public safety? Does the rescue mission and effective distribution of medicine and aid depend on establishing military order? Or, might the mobilizing of civil society make for more effective reconstruction?
The way disasters get reported from an outsider perspective easily reinforces the law and order rather than humanitarian view. The voice-overs to the photos often encourage us to see a cauldron of violence lying below the injured and grieving people desperately looking for ways to survive. Even block-buster disaster movies depict panicky masses as a backdrop to outsider superheroes. Research on disasters, however, suggests that for the most part, ordinary people, often already living with much insecurity, don’t panic. Of course people want to be helped, and they get angry and cynical when help promised during peak TV coverage isn’t actually delivered. But on-the-ground help by those who stay is always appreciated. There is lots of tender hearted loving care occurring on the front lines as I write.
Panic is often generated by the country’s elite who are nervous about the collapse of authority. This “elite panic” sees the breakdown of customary controls as a threat to relative privilege. This isn’t to say that people with more wealth aren’t generous in such devastating circumstance. One Haitian man who owned land where homeless families went to squat commented “I won’t throw them off, because they have no place else to go.” But what happens in a few months or years?
Elites often have direct access to donor countries and aid agencies, and re-establishing control rather than immediately meeting human needs can take political priority. This can lead to the militarization of aid. This doesn’t have to be either-or, if security is clearly tied to delivering aid, but when the military takes charge this becomes more difficult. People easily get confused about what’s happening.
Public safety is enhanced by working directly with the people in need. Experience after tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes shows people are generous, resourceful and brave in helping rebuild their community. Though hurt, shocked and deprived, people are extremely resilient in acting for the common good. By the time a rescue mission got to one isolated community outside Port-au-Prince, the local people had self-organized to dig out survivors, bury their dead and build alternative shelter. Meanwhile the outside media was highlighting looting. How can scavenging for bits of building material or food in the aftermath of such total devastation be described as “looting”?
Aid sometimes gets bogged down in its own bureaucracy. While stocks of canned food piled up at the airport there was fresh food available at some Haitian markets which aid agencies could have bought and distributed, while helping restore the local economy. Rebuilding efforts after the 2004 tsunami show partnerships between aid groups and villagers is the most effective way to build sustainable shelter. The simple act of giving thousands of low-cost wheel-barrels to Haitians had a more positive effect than sending in more high-cost troops. The wheel-barrels acted as stretchers to get injured to field clinics, and allowed those scavenging to better distribute reusable material.
BEYOND DISASTER CAPITALISM
Human resilience grows into the empowerment essential for rebuilding. This strengthens civil society so that governance can become more participatory and democratic. Unfortunately this threatens vested interests who want to profit from reconstruction; to have top-down controls and their privilege return. So the processes used will shape the political and economic outcome, and elite panic and militarization of aid won’t leave behind a more participatory society.
Naomi Klein’s best seller, The Shock Doctrine, documents the corporate readiness to exploit in the aftermath of disaster. The book has hit a nerve, but its attempt to cover everything from the Chilean coup in 1973, to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, to Hurricane Mitch in 1998 makes it a bit of a stretch. To learn the lessons of sustainability we’ll need to balance this view with one that explores the capacity of the grass-roots to take control of their grave situation. In “A Paradise Built In Hell”, award-winning historian, Rebecca Soinit, describes how in the aftermath of disaster people can rebuild their society as they rebuild their lives. One reviewer put it well, saying the book disputes “civil defense planners, media alarmists and Hollywood directors who insist that disasters produce terrified mobs prone to looting, murder and cannibalism unless controlled by armed forces and government expertise.” After exhaustive research on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, 1917 Halifax explosion, 1985 Mexico earthquake, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, Soinit concludes that there is spontaneous altruism, self-organization and mutual aid among neighbours and strangers. She argues that such human solidarity points the way to a freer society.
We don’t want to depend upon disasters to fully appreciate humanity’s resilience. Climate change and militarization won’t always provide second-chance learning opportunities, so sustainability is going to require more collective foresight.
Next time I’ll look at how well we’re doing so far in our 21st Century.
~ ~ ~ ~
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley. Past columns are available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
AFTER A DECADE OF SHOCK AND AWE
by Oscar » Mon Mar 01, 2010 5:18 pm
AFTER A DECADE OF SHOCK AND AWE
by Jim Harding
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan - Feb. 26, 2010
It’s common to recap events in decades. We often even adopt decade identities – the rebellious sixties, the greedy eighties, etc. Might we call the first decade of the 21st century the “shock and awe” decade?
The decade is mostly defined by the aftermath of the Sept. 11th 2001 bombing of New York’s Twin Towers. The hysteria generated after this was instrumental in starting two destructive “wars on terrorism”, which trudge on. The Security State has grown along with insurgencies and the politics of fear, none of which are good foundations for building sustainable societies. But much more happened! The decade saw a global economic crisis, devastating natural disasters, extreme storms and deepening of the climate crisis controversy, all of which will shape the coming decade.
BUBBLES AND LIVES BURSTING
Many corporate bubbles burst in the last decade. The S & P 500 lost 25% of their stock value; the dot.com bubble burst as markets plummeted after 9/11. The decade ended when the real estate bubble burst and the world entered the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. While a few got richer, the majority did not. Many people lost jobs and large amounts of their pensions. The trillion dollar and growing debt from the U.S’s ongoing “wars on terrorism” and economic bailouts will continue to destabilize that country. In the 1990’we were talking of the U.S. being the world’s only superpower. This last decade likely ended that.
Those facing natural and climate disasters had more fundamental challenges than securing their retirement. The tsunami that followed from the earthquake off Sumatra on December 24, 2004 left 230,000 persons dead. The May 12, 2008 earthquake at Sichuan, China killed another 70,000. And the May 2, 2008 cyclone in Burma killed 140,000 more. In the west we likely know far more about the August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina which killed about 2,000 persons. As with the Haitian earthquake, which killed 230,000 persons, social position and political marginalization played a major role in shaping vulnerability.
Extreme weather events and the magnitude of storms propelled worldwide support for actions to prevent irreversible climate change. But the politics of fossil fuel dependency and resistance to moving beyond our carbon economy has won out, so far. Greenhouse gases continued to rise during the last decade, and the Canadian government got a deserved international reputation for undermining climate justice. At the same time the shift towards a green economy and support for renewable energy accelerated worldwide, including in Saskatchewan; the climate controversy won’t be on the back-burner for long.
Over the last decade the politics of fear clearly ascended. One-quarter of Americans now believe they are at risk from a terrorist attack, while, realistically, they face greater dangers from their cars. Our moral sense of proportion became even more warped during the past decade. How do we compare the 2,900 innocent civilians who died so tragically in the Twin Towers or those dead or suffering from occupational hazards after intervening in the ordeal, to the many more soldiers and insurgents who have died at war? Or to the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died from these terrifying wars? Or to the many more who will now live traumatized lives? Or to those forced to eke out an existence on war-poisoned land? The end-justifies-the means mentality of the last decade is simply not sustainable.
MORE OF SAME?
We humans have huge capacity for denial and dissociation. I, too, look forward to World Cup soccer or Canada-U.S. hockey games, and hope that international sports is making us more accepting of human diversity. But I know that sports and entertainment celebrity culture can also blind us from human suffering and glaring inequalities. How quickly beer-drinking Olympic-mania replaced coverage of the millions still grieving and struggling in Haiti! It’s hard not to conclude that achieving sustainability will require a massive resurgence of human spirituality. Perhaps this has been going on underneath all the shock and awe we have collectively experienced and this will continue to blossom in coming years. Perhaps!
For many the election of President Obama was a sign of moderation and hope, but it was premature to present him with a Peace Prize without any track record. Moving towards more peace and security is a challenge to us all. It is heartening that the U.S. and Russia are talking of nuclear weapons reductions, but nuclear proliferation remains a global threat, with the help of the spreading of nuclear technology. It hasn’t helped the cause that, as the British Inquiry on the War on Iraq is now confirming, the US and UK manipulated fears about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) to justify their planned invasion of Iraq. All of us can contribute to peace and security by resisting such disinformation campaigns, and demanding more participation and transparency within our democracies. Do we ever need this in Canada now!
The huge changes occurring in the last decade clearly set us up for either more of the same or embracing the needed shift towards sustainability. There will be no tech-fixes in this evolutionary endeavour, but the growth of the internet and other mass communications likely sets the stage for the coming decade. Will the globalizing of communications help us to get a more accurate and compassionate view of the challenges facing humanity? Will this create even more narcissism and attention deficit among those bonding to the new technology market? The last decade vividly shows the challenges to not living in bubbles and to continually enhancing connection. Perhaps down deep, after all the shock and awe, many will be whispering “enough is enough.” And, like spring winds, whispers can grow.
Next time I’ll explore how population growth affects sustainability.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley. Past columns are available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
by Jim Harding
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan - Feb. 26, 2010
It’s common to recap events in decades. We often even adopt decade identities – the rebellious sixties, the greedy eighties, etc. Might we call the first decade of the 21st century the “shock and awe” decade?
The decade is mostly defined by the aftermath of the Sept. 11th 2001 bombing of New York’s Twin Towers. The hysteria generated after this was instrumental in starting two destructive “wars on terrorism”, which trudge on. The Security State has grown along with insurgencies and the politics of fear, none of which are good foundations for building sustainable societies. But much more happened! The decade saw a global economic crisis, devastating natural disasters, extreme storms and deepening of the climate crisis controversy, all of which will shape the coming decade.
BUBBLES AND LIVES BURSTING
Many corporate bubbles burst in the last decade. The S & P 500 lost 25% of their stock value; the dot.com bubble burst as markets plummeted after 9/11. The decade ended when the real estate bubble burst and the world entered the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. While a few got richer, the majority did not. Many people lost jobs and large amounts of their pensions. The trillion dollar and growing debt from the U.S’s ongoing “wars on terrorism” and economic bailouts will continue to destabilize that country. In the 1990’we were talking of the U.S. being the world’s only superpower. This last decade likely ended that.
Those facing natural and climate disasters had more fundamental challenges than securing their retirement. The tsunami that followed from the earthquake off Sumatra on December 24, 2004 left 230,000 persons dead. The May 12, 2008 earthquake at Sichuan, China killed another 70,000. And the May 2, 2008 cyclone in Burma killed 140,000 more. In the west we likely know far more about the August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina which killed about 2,000 persons. As with the Haitian earthquake, which killed 230,000 persons, social position and political marginalization played a major role in shaping vulnerability.
Extreme weather events and the magnitude of storms propelled worldwide support for actions to prevent irreversible climate change. But the politics of fossil fuel dependency and resistance to moving beyond our carbon economy has won out, so far. Greenhouse gases continued to rise during the last decade, and the Canadian government got a deserved international reputation for undermining climate justice. At the same time the shift towards a green economy and support for renewable energy accelerated worldwide, including in Saskatchewan; the climate controversy won’t be on the back-burner for long.
Over the last decade the politics of fear clearly ascended. One-quarter of Americans now believe they are at risk from a terrorist attack, while, realistically, they face greater dangers from their cars. Our moral sense of proportion became even more warped during the past decade. How do we compare the 2,900 innocent civilians who died so tragically in the Twin Towers or those dead or suffering from occupational hazards after intervening in the ordeal, to the many more soldiers and insurgents who have died at war? Or to the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died from these terrifying wars? Or to the many more who will now live traumatized lives? Or to those forced to eke out an existence on war-poisoned land? The end-justifies-the means mentality of the last decade is simply not sustainable.
MORE OF SAME?
We humans have huge capacity for denial and dissociation. I, too, look forward to World Cup soccer or Canada-U.S. hockey games, and hope that international sports is making us more accepting of human diversity. But I know that sports and entertainment celebrity culture can also blind us from human suffering and glaring inequalities. How quickly beer-drinking Olympic-mania replaced coverage of the millions still grieving and struggling in Haiti! It’s hard not to conclude that achieving sustainability will require a massive resurgence of human spirituality. Perhaps this has been going on underneath all the shock and awe we have collectively experienced and this will continue to blossom in coming years. Perhaps!
For many the election of President Obama was a sign of moderation and hope, but it was premature to present him with a Peace Prize without any track record. Moving towards more peace and security is a challenge to us all. It is heartening that the U.S. and Russia are talking of nuclear weapons reductions, but nuclear proliferation remains a global threat, with the help of the spreading of nuclear technology. It hasn’t helped the cause that, as the British Inquiry on the War on Iraq is now confirming, the US and UK manipulated fears about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) to justify their planned invasion of Iraq. All of us can contribute to peace and security by resisting such disinformation campaigns, and demanding more participation and transparency within our democracies. Do we ever need this in Canada now!
The huge changes occurring in the last decade clearly set us up for either more of the same or embracing the needed shift towards sustainability. There will be no tech-fixes in this evolutionary endeavour, but the growth of the internet and other mass communications likely sets the stage for the coming decade. Will the globalizing of communications help us to get a more accurate and compassionate view of the challenges facing humanity? Will this create even more narcissism and attention deficit among those bonding to the new technology market? The last decade vividly shows the challenges to not living in bubbles and to continually enhancing connection. Perhaps down deep, after all the shock and awe, many will be whispering “enough is enough.” And, like spring winds, whispers can grow.
Next time I’ll explore how population growth affects sustainability.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley. Past columns are available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
IS A BIGGER POPULATION BETTER?
by Oscar » Sun Mar 07, 2010 1:19 pm
IS A BIGGER POPULATION BETTER?
BY Jim Harding
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan - March 5, 2010
The Saskatchewan government celebrated when our population got over 1 million people, as though it is self-evident that more is better. But is it? As you read this there are 6.8 billion (i.e. 6,800,000,000) persons trying to eke out a decent life with meaning and happiness on this planet. When this 21st century started, only a decade ago, there were 900,000,000 fewer of us. That’s 900 “Saskatchewans” in ten years, which is astounding. By the middle of this century there will be over 9,000,000,000 of us.
Let’s put this growth of humans into perspective. At the beginning of the 19th century, just two centuries ago, there were less than one billion humans on the planet. That’s the number that went to bed hungry on last year’s World Food Day. And, unless we move towards more sustainable societies, there will be many more desperate people on our shrinking planet.
It‘s naïve to believe that increased economic growth will meet increasing human needs in perpetuity. Economies that continually double production and societies that double population are simply not viable. We are not only running out of non-renewable resources but out of space, and we need to start scaling ourselves down. Our present system of economic growth enlarges a global underclass, mostly from people driven from land that is exploited and degraded to bring consumer goods to richer regions like Canada. And this inequality, especially for women, perpetuates population growth. So we are now confronting, in a big way, the ecological limits to both economic and population growth.
UNDERSTANDING FERTILITY RATES
Part of the solution lies in suspending our stereotypes so we can better understand why population grows or declines. We have lots to learn from demographers who study fertility rates, or how many children women have over their lifespan. It may surprise you that since the 1970s the world’s fertility rate has begun to fall and is now 2.5 children per woman. Over 70 countries, many in Europe, have even dropped below the replacement level of 2.1 children. Even in the poorer, developing countries fertility rates have dropped from 6 to 3 children since the 1950’s. India is now at 2.7, down from 3.5 at the turn of the century. China has made the most startling drop, from 5 to 1.5 children since the 1970s. At this rate China’s total population will start to drop within 15 years. Twenty-one countries are already dropping.
Unfortunately, demographers aren’t having much effect on public opinion. Reproduction and fertility raise all sorts of religious and political flags; a hornet’s nest of moral controversies is sparked by any talk of controlling human population. This is not only about abortion but about contraception, human dignity, women’s rights and ecological carrying capacity. And there’s lots of confusion and contradiction in all this. The preference for boy children and the coercive methods used in China shows we haven’t yet reconciled population reduction with human rights.
One way to approach these contentious issues is to ask “what if?” What if there hadn’t been an expansion of family planning since the 1970s. What would we be facing today? Demographers say without such successes we’d be looking at 16, not 9, billion humans on the planet by mid-century. That’s a massive difference, affecting the size and ecological impacts of economies, human demands on water and the numbers of humans facing impoverishment. From this stance we may have already turned a big corner towards a more sustainable population.
UNRAVELING THE CONTROVERSY
There are many dimensions to this. Fertility rates remain high in sub-Sahara and Western Africa and places like Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and in all these cases patriarchy, poverty and population are tightly interwoven. It’s somewhat ironic that the country in Western Europe with the lowest fertility rate (1.3) is the largely Catholic country of Italy. It is possible to control pregnancy and space out children by following the reproductive cycle (the rhythm method), which has the advantage of avoiding many serious risks to women’s health from contraceptives. But it’s likely that other factors are more vital, including the integration of women into mainstream Italian social and economic life. Japan’s low fertility rate of 1.2 children is not only influenced by the changing status of women, but by a higher rate of celibacy. Cultural taboos which label children from out of wedlock as “illegitimate”, which remain strong in South Korea, but exist here, too, are known to increase both adoption and abortion. Also, we know that population decline can be seen as a threat to cultural survival, and we need to separate theocratic and chauvinist motives from legitimate concerns about the survival of land-based indigenous peoples. Reducing population also reduces a country’s ecological footprint, though this shouldn’t blind us to huge global inequities in producing greenhouse gases – e.g. per capita GHGs in Saskatchewan are 18 times higher than for every person in China. Nevertheless, were there 400 million more Chinese, which is what would have happened without family planning, China’s GHG emissions and ecological degradation would be greater.
We must stress human dignity and the advancement of human rights as we move towards a sustainable population. And the evidence from the demographers is that the pursuit of equality and social justice, not population control per se, is the most effective path to take.
Next time I’ll consider whether these clashes in morality will settle down as we learn to better live within the natural systems.
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns and other non-nuclear resources available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
BY Jim Harding
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan - March 5, 2010
The Saskatchewan government celebrated when our population got over 1 million people, as though it is self-evident that more is better. But is it? As you read this there are 6.8 billion (i.e. 6,800,000,000) persons trying to eke out a decent life with meaning and happiness on this planet. When this 21st century started, only a decade ago, there were 900,000,000 fewer of us. That’s 900 “Saskatchewans” in ten years, which is astounding. By the middle of this century there will be over 9,000,000,000 of us.
Let’s put this growth of humans into perspective. At the beginning of the 19th century, just two centuries ago, there were less than one billion humans on the planet. That’s the number that went to bed hungry on last year’s World Food Day. And, unless we move towards more sustainable societies, there will be many more desperate people on our shrinking planet.
It‘s naïve to believe that increased economic growth will meet increasing human needs in perpetuity. Economies that continually double production and societies that double population are simply not viable. We are not only running out of non-renewable resources but out of space, and we need to start scaling ourselves down. Our present system of economic growth enlarges a global underclass, mostly from people driven from land that is exploited and degraded to bring consumer goods to richer regions like Canada. And this inequality, especially for women, perpetuates population growth. So we are now confronting, in a big way, the ecological limits to both economic and population growth.
UNDERSTANDING FERTILITY RATES
Part of the solution lies in suspending our stereotypes so we can better understand why population grows or declines. We have lots to learn from demographers who study fertility rates, or how many children women have over their lifespan. It may surprise you that since the 1970s the world’s fertility rate has begun to fall and is now 2.5 children per woman. Over 70 countries, many in Europe, have even dropped below the replacement level of 2.1 children. Even in the poorer, developing countries fertility rates have dropped from 6 to 3 children since the 1950’s. India is now at 2.7, down from 3.5 at the turn of the century. China has made the most startling drop, from 5 to 1.5 children since the 1970s. At this rate China’s total population will start to drop within 15 years. Twenty-one countries are already dropping.
Unfortunately, demographers aren’t having much effect on public opinion. Reproduction and fertility raise all sorts of religious and political flags; a hornet’s nest of moral controversies is sparked by any talk of controlling human population. This is not only about abortion but about contraception, human dignity, women’s rights and ecological carrying capacity. And there’s lots of confusion and contradiction in all this. The preference for boy children and the coercive methods used in China shows we haven’t yet reconciled population reduction with human rights.
One way to approach these contentious issues is to ask “what if?” What if there hadn’t been an expansion of family planning since the 1970s. What would we be facing today? Demographers say without such successes we’d be looking at 16, not 9, billion humans on the planet by mid-century. That’s a massive difference, affecting the size and ecological impacts of economies, human demands on water and the numbers of humans facing impoverishment. From this stance we may have already turned a big corner towards a more sustainable population.
UNRAVELING THE CONTROVERSY
There are many dimensions to this. Fertility rates remain high in sub-Sahara and Western Africa and places like Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and in all these cases patriarchy, poverty and population are tightly interwoven. It’s somewhat ironic that the country in Western Europe with the lowest fertility rate (1.3) is the largely Catholic country of Italy. It is possible to control pregnancy and space out children by following the reproductive cycle (the rhythm method), which has the advantage of avoiding many serious risks to women’s health from contraceptives. But it’s likely that other factors are more vital, including the integration of women into mainstream Italian social and economic life. Japan’s low fertility rate of 1.2 children is not only influenced by the changing status of women, but by a higher rate of celibacy. Cultural taboos which label children from out of wedlock as “illegitimate”, which remain strong in South Korea, but exist here, too, are known to increase both adoption and abortion. Also, we know that population decline can be seen as a threat to cultural survival, and we need to separate theocratic and chauvinist motives from legitimate concerns about the survival of land-based indigenous peoples. Reducing population also reduces a country’s ecological footprint, though this shouldn’t blind us to huge global inequities in producing greenhouse gases – e.g. per capita GHGs in Saskatchewan are 18 times higher than for every person in China. Nevertheless, were there 400 million more Chinese, which is what would have happened without family planning, China’s GHG emissions and ecological degradation would be greater.
We must stress human dignity and the advancement of human rights as we move towards a sustainable population. And the evidence from the demographers is that the pursuit of equality and social justice, not population control per se, is the most effective path to take.
Next time I’ll consider whether these clashes in morality will settle down as we learn to better live within the natural systems.
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns and other non-nuclear resources available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
POPULATION AND MORALITY: WHY THE DISCONNECTS?
by Oscar » Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:36 am
POPULATION AND MORALITY: WHY THE DISCONNECTS?
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in R-Town News - March 12, 2010
We’ve come a long way as a species. There were only one million of us, today’s Saskatchewan population, on the whole planet prior to the agri-cultural transformations 10,000 years ago. Population growth was slow as empires rose and fell while far-away indigenous peoples carried on with their steady-state lives. World population escalated after 1400, largely due to the availability of more food from the spread of colonialism and improved living conditions in the homeland. Between 1730 and 1830 the number of children in London dying before five was cut by more than half.
In 1798 Mathus argued that if population grew exponentially it would outstrip food production. He was wrong in the short run as food production grew along with population, but this challenge is revisiting us with climate change. Population continues to be associated with many ideologies, e.g. that it increases prosperity or military might. Fears of the European elite about being out-bred by non-whites or the lower classes led to the push for eugenics, which was embraced by the Nazis and thankfully discredited. But deep double standards remain. U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s promoted population control abroad as a means to foster economic development. The opposite has proven truer.
DEVELOPMENT AS CONTRACEPTION
Population and economy are more than chicken-and-egg, and in the 1970s we learned that enhanced quality of life leads to smaller families. The lowering fertility rates in many developing countries attest to this. By the 1990s the UN was focusing on women’s rights – including reduction of infant mortality, access to education and, most contentiously, reproductive health. However, the climate crisis has brought back concerns about population and food security. The lucrative market for bio-fuels to “feed” the military-industrial complex has already pushed up the price of staple foods in many regions.
There’s lots to disentangle. What might we find if we bracket some of our moral beliefs? In sub-Sahara Africa there is a cluster of high fertility and maternal mortality rates, low contraception use, high incidence of unsafe abortion and escalation of the ravages of HIV. It is very challenging to sort out correlation from causation. Some people carry memories of coercive population control programs. Disinformation about HIV sometimes undercuts prevention programs, including the promotion of condoms. Worldwide, abortions have dropped since 1995, but not in Africa, and they remain highest where abortion is illegal, such as Catholic areas of Nigeria. According to the Guttmacher Institute the rate is at least 29 per 1,000 in Africa compared to 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe. The WHO estimates that one-seventh of all maternal deaths in Africa result from unsafe abortions.
Disinformation is always rampant with prohibition; in some places fear of contraceptive side effects leads to reliance on unsafe abortions for birth control. There are many factual surprises in this highly charged matter, and religion doesn’t necessarily shape outcomes as stereotypes might expect. The country most successful in lowering fertility rates, from 6.6. in 1970 to 1.9 per women today, is Iran. The Islamic leaders initially opposed family planning, interestingly to ensure enough soldiers to fight Iraq, but Iran ultimately launched a quality of life campaign based on family planning and availability of contraception. This campaign largely succeeded due to women’s rising educational status; from 1976 to 2006 the literacy rate among young rural Iranian women went from 10% to 90%.
Discussion of reproductive health easily gets polarized into controversies over conception, contraception and women’s rights. Can we get beneath these differences and find a view that better unifies humans in our quest for a sustainable population? I think so. There is little doubt that the main reason why family planning is working is because it enhances equality of women. When young girls go to school, they delay and better space childbearing. In other words, building up public education and healthcare is the way to reduce population growth. And this also improves population health; the chances of survival of children increase in smaller families and these children are generally healthier.
IS PATRIARCHY SUSTAINABLE?
Various groups nevertheless oppose different aspects of family planning as immoral and a threat to “human dignity” and “creation”. Abortion is not the only issue. A woman’s right to say “no!” to aggressive male sexuality is still very much in dispute worldwide. Yet there is no doubt that, if women are better protected from violence and rape, abortion goes down. Abortion is also directly tied to lack of contraception; according to the February New Internationalist, 40% of women worldwide who desire contraception don’t have access. Often opposition to women’s reproductive rights and women’s heath cloaks the defense of patriarchy. So it seems that traditional morality will continue to be challenged by the shift towards sustainability.
What might happen if human morality were better linked to consequences rather than treated as being abstractly right or wrong? If the move towards women’s equality is the most fundamental factor in lowering fertility, and averting a population crisis, and if this shift to equality lowers the need for abortions, dangerous or safe, then perhaps we are moving in the right direction. The sanctity of human life must include consideration of what the needs of 16 billion humans by mid-century would have done to the degradation of the planet and the quality of life, if not for family planning. The UN’s population estimates for 2050 still range from below 8 billion humans to over 11 billion, and what we do now will shape the impact for our future kin. Perhaps the sanctity of life and creation has to become more about protecting, preserving and restoring habitats and biodiversity which will contribute to human betterment. Is it time for a rethink?
Next time I’ll explore why Hollywood’s Academy didn’t give Avatar the award for best film.
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns and other non-nuclear resources available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in R-Town News - March 12, 2010
We’ve come a long way as a species. There were only one million of us, today’s Saskatchewan population, on the whole planet prior to the agri-cultural transformations 10,000 years ago. Population growth was slow as empires rose and fell while far-away indigenous peoples carried on with their steady-state lives. World population escalated after 1400, largely due to the availability of more food from the spread of colonialism and improved living conditions in the homeland. Between 1730 and 1830 the number of children in London dying before five was cut by more than half.
In 1798 Mathus argued that if population grew exponentially it would outstrip food production. He was wrong in the short run as food production grew along with population, but this challenge is revisiting us with climate change. Population continues to be associated with many ideologies, e.g. that it increases prosperity or military might. Fears of the European elite about being out-bred by non-whites or the lower classes led to the push for eugenics, which was embraced by the Nazis and thankfully discredited. But deep double standards remain. U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s promoted population control abroad as a means to foster economic development. The opposite has proven truer.
DEVELOPMENT AS CONTRACEPTION
Population and economy are more than chicken-and-egg, and in the 1970s we learned that enhanced quality of life leads to smaller families. The lowering fertility rates in many developing countries attest to this. By the 1990s the UN was focusing on women’s rights – including reduction of infant mortality, access to education and, most contentiously, reproductive health. However, the climate crisis has brought back concerns about population and food security. The lucrative market for bio-fuels to “feed” the military-industrial complex has already pushed up the price of staple foods in many regions.
There’s lots to disentangle. What might we find if we bracket some of our moral beliefs? In sub-Sahara Africa there is a cluster of high fertility and maternal mortality rates, low contraception use, high incidence of unsafe abortion and escalation of the ravages of HIV. It is very challenging to sort out correlation from causation. Some people carry memories of coercive population control programs. Disinformation about HIV sometimes undercuts prevention programs, including the promotion of condoms. Worldwide, abortions have dropped since 1995, but not in Africa, and they remain highest where abortion is illegal, such as Catholic areas of Nigeria. According to the Guttmacher Institute the rate is at least 29 per 1,000 in Africa compared to 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe. The WHO estimates that one-seventh of all maternal deaths in Africa result from unsafe abortions.
Disinformation is always rampant with prohibition; in some places fear of contraceptive side effects leads to reliance on unsafe abortions for birth control. There are many factual surprises in this highly charged matter, and religion doesn’t necessarily shape outcomes as stereotypes might expect. The country most successful in lowering fertility rates, from 6.6. in 1970 to 1.9 per women today, is Iran. The Islamic leaders initially opposed family planning, interestingly to ensure enough soldiers to fight Iraq, but Iran ultimately launched a quality of life campaign based on family planning and availability of contraception. This campaign largely succeeded due to women’s rising educational status; from 1976 to 2006 the literacy rate among young rural Iranian women went from 10% to 90%.
Discussion of reproductive health easily gets polarized into controversies over conception, contraception and women’s rights. Can we get beneath these differences and find a view that better unifies humans in our quest for a sustainable population? I think so. There is little doubt that the main reason why family planning is working is because it enhances equality of women. When young girls go to school, they delay and better space childbearing. In other words, building up public education and healthcare is the way to reduce population growth. And this also improves population health; the chances of survival of children increase in smaller families and these children are generally healthier.
IS PATRIARCHY SUSTAINABLE?
Various groups nevertheless oppose different aspects of family planning as immoral and a threat to “human dignity” and “creation”. Abortion is not the only issue. A woman’s right to say “no!” to aggressive male sexuality is still very much in dispute worldwide. Yet there is no doubt that, if women are better protected from violence and rape, abortion goes down. Abortion is also directly tied to lack of contraception; according to the February New Internationalist, 40% of women worldwide who desire contraception don’t have access. Often opposition to women’s reproductive rights and women’s heath cloaks the defense of patriarchy. So it seems that traditional morality will continue to be challenged by the shift towards sustainability.
What might happen if human morality were better linked to consequences rather than treated as being abstractly right or wrong? If the move towards women’s equality is the most fundamental factor in lowering fertility, and averting a population crisis, and if this shift to equality lowers the need for abortions, dangerous or safe, then perhaps we are moving in the right direction. The sanctity of human life must include consideration of what the needs of 16 billion humans by mid-century would have done to the degradation of the planet and the quality of life, if not for family planning. The UN’s population estimates for 2050 still range from below 8 billion humans to over 11 billion, and what we do now will shape the impact for our future kin. Perhaps the sanctity of life and creation has to become more about protecting, preserving and restoring habitats and biodiversity which will contribute to human betterment. Is it time for a rethink?
Next time I’ll explore why Hollywood’s Academy didn’t give Avatar the award for best film.
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns and other non-nuclear resources available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
OVERCOMING THE NUCLEAR THREAT
by Oscar » Mon Apr 26, 2010 10:20 am
OVERCOMING THE NUCLEAR THREAT BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in UNOS (United Newspapers of Saskatchewan) April 23, 2010
Thankfully the banning of nuclear weapons is back in the news. The global threat from accidental or regional nuclear war is usually relegated to our unconscious, similar to threats from climate change, and it is healthy to have it back in the public eye. This is happening mainly due to US President Obama, who, last April in Prague, spoke of “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” There’s some progress, for this April 8th the US and Russia announced a reduction of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, with thorough inspections; and a week later Obama hosted 47 nations at a Nuclear Security Summit. This isn’t going away, for in May there will be the Review Conference for the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and negotiating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty are on the horizon.
Will Obama’s initiative prove effective in finally removing this scourge from the earth? We can’t answer this without seeing how we got into the mess where 9 nuclear powers have 23,000 weapons and, according to the US State Department, another 50 countries are capable of building them. Certainly the US and Russia can’t credibly appeal to other countries to disarm, or to not develop nuclear weapons, while they have 95% (22,000) of the world’s nuclear weapons. And while their recent Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) agrees to reduce each side’s warheads to 1,550 and delivery systems to 800 by 2017, as a BBC report said, they “can still blow themselves up many times over” They clearly have to make further, massive cuts.
OUR NUCLEAR KARMA
After A-bombing Japan in 1945, nuclear weapons became part of a nuclear threat-deterrence strategy. In 1950 the US threatened the Soviet Union with nuclear attack over its involvement in oil-rich Iran. The US then justified its nuclear build-up as a way to deter the superiority of Soviet conventional forces in Europe. Until the 1960s the US entertained the notion of limited nuclear war, and, after a little sanity returned, we still face the possibility of mutual assured destruction, with the fitting acronym MAD. First-strike policies have not yet been laid to rest.
Sanity has been slow to develop. Mothers protested atmospheric tests after discovering their newborns had radioactive isotopes in their bodies. By the late 1960s the “Ban-the-Bomb” movement helped get a Test Ban Treaty, and soon after, in 1970, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), now endorsed by 184 countries. The first nuclear arms control agreement came in 1972. After a bigger nuclear arms race in the 1980s, which some believe helped implode the Soviet economy, talk of disarmament began. In 1985 President Reagan and Gorbachev agreed “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and a year later, in Iceland, they almost agreed to abolish nuclear weapons.
While these agreements slowed down proliferation, they did not stop it. Some countries with nuclear weapons - Israel, India and Pakistan - still haven’t signed the NPT. Some countries that have signed have helped other countries get the bomb, e.g. in 1974 Canada helped India. Further, the Harper government is now negotiating nuclear and uranium agreements with this renegade nation. Some countries that signed the NPT - North Korea and Iran - seem committed to model the big powers and develop weapons capacity along with nuclear power. And the politics of fear continues to “fuel” this proliferation, for as Jonathon Schell says in The Nation article “Reaching Zero”, “Pakistan fears India, which fears China, which fears Russia, which fears the United States.” Hopefully Obama’s initiatives can help reverse the chain of fear.
OVERCOMING NUCLEAR INCOHERENCE
After the geopolitical revolutions of 1989-91 and the end of the Cold War many hoped for the dismantling of nuclear arsenals, and redirection of the huge military spending towards human development. But it didn’t happen, mostly because we hadn’t yet changed our thinking. But many of the original “nuclear hawks” have now changed theirs. Before his death past US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara called for the elimination of nuclear weapons from NATO’s strategy. Fog of War, the documentary on him which won an Academy Award, is worth viewing. In 2007, writing in the Wall Street Journal, several retired US officials, including former Secretaries of State, Kissinger and Schultz, called for “a world free of nuclear weapons.”
But this will require us being more coherent about the nuclear threat. “Nuclear strategy” is a complete illusion, even an oxymoron. Strategy has to do with clearly linking tactics to achievable objectives. Due to the inherent ecological destructiveness of nuclear warfare it’s impossible to link it to moral or acceptable political ends. Some military heads understand this better than some heads of state. And the NPT was always intended to go hand in hand with nuclear disarmament. But this hasn’t happened. If the US or other nuclear powers can justify keeping their arsenal as a deterrent, then why not all countries! After the invasion of Iraq on trumped-up claims about WMD’s, many smaller countries may think they have to have nuclear weapons to deter big-power aggression. The leaders of North Korea continue to play on national fears of a US invasion stemming from the Korean War. President Bush was already threatening an invasion of Iran, before things bogged-down militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. Further, Obama making military threats for non-compliance with the NPT, when the US is itself in non-compliance, doesn't really help. And it’s still a toss-up what kind of administration will replace Obama.
We must avoid a tipping point in nuclear proliferation. Obama’s initiatives are a start, though the recent Nuclear Security Summit has been advanced narrowly as a way to avert “nuclear terrorism”. Yet, to even do this will require continual nuclear weapon reductions going hand in hand with non-proliferation measures. And it will also require the continual shift toward non-nuclear energy. A normative and ethical shift, which sees nuclear weapons for what they are, a crime against humanity and nature, is urgently required. This is a prerequisite for humanity’s transition to sustainability.
~ ~ ~ ~
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns and other non-nuclear resources available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in UNOS (United Newspapers of Saskatchewan) April 23, 2010
Thankfully the banning of nuclear weapons is back in the news. The global threat from accidental or regional nuclear war is usually relegated to our unconscious, similar to threats from climate change, and it is healthy to have it back in the public eye. This is happening mainly due to US President Obama, who, last April in Prague, spoke of “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” There’s some progress, for this April 8th the US and Russia announced a reduction of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, with thorough inspections; and a week later Obama hosted 47 nations at a Nuclear Security Summit. This isn’t going away, for in May there will be the Review Conference for the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and negotiating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty are on the horizon.
Will Obama’s initiative prove effective in finally removing this scourge from the earth? We can’t answer this without seeing how we got into the mess where 9 nuclear powers have 23,000 weapons and, according to the US State Department, another 50 countries are capable of building them. Certainly the US and Russia can’t credibly appeal to other countries to disarm, or to not develop nuclear weapons, while they have 95% (22,000) of the world’s nuclear weapons. And while their recent Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) agrees to reduce each side’s warheads to 1,550 and delivery systems to 800 by 2017, as a BBC report said, they “can still blow themselves up many times over” They clearly have to make further, massive cuts.
OUR NUCLEAR KARMA
After A-bombing Japan in 1945, nuclear weapons became part of a nuclear threat-deterrence strategy. In 1950 the US threatened the Soviet Union with nuclear attack over its involvement in oil-rich Iran. The US then justified its nuclear build-up as a way to deter the superiority of Soviet conventional forces in Europe. Until the 1960s the US entertained the notion of limited nuclear war, and, after a little sanity returned, we still face the possibility of mutual assured destruction, with the fitting acronym MAD. First-strike policies have not yet been laid to rest.
Sanity has been slow to develop. Mothers protested atmospheric tests after discovering their newborns had radioactive isotopes in their bodies. By the late 1960s the “Ban-the-Bomb” movement helped get a Test Ban Treaty, and soon after, in 1970, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), now endorsed by 184 countries. The first nuclear arms control agreement came in 1972. After a bigger nuclear arms race in the 1980s, which some believe helped implode the Soviet economy, talk of disarmament began. In 1985 President Reagan and Gorbachev agreed “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and a year later, in Iceland, they almost agreed to abolish nuclear weapons.
While these agreements slowed down proliferation, they did not stop it. Some countries with nuclear weapons - Israel, India and Pakistan - still haven’t signed the NPT. Some countries that have signed have helped other countries get the bomb, e.g. in 1974 Canada helped India. Further, the Harper government is now negotiating nuclear and uranium agreements with this renegade nation. Some countries that signed the NPT - North Korea and Iran - seem committed to model the big powers and develop weapons capacity along with nuclear power. And the politics of fear continues to “fuel” this proliferation, for as Jonathon Schell says in The Nation article “Reaching Zero”, “Pakistan fears India, which fears China, which fears Russia, which fears the United States.” Hopefully Obama’s initiatives can help reverse the chain of fear.
OVERCOMING NUCLEAR INCOHERENCE
After the geopolitical revolutions of 1989-91 and the end of the Cold War many hoped for the dismantling of nuclear arsenals, and redirection of the huge military spending towards human development. But it didn’t happen, mostly because we hadn’t yet changed our thinking. But many of the original “nuclear hawks” have now changed theirs. Before his death past US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara called for the elimination of nuclear weapons from NATO’s strategy. Fog of War, the documentary on him which won an Academy Award, is worth viewing. In 2007, writing in the Wall Street Journal, several retired US officials, including former Secretaries of State, Kissinger and Schultz, called for “a world free of nuclear weapons.”
But this will require us being more coherent about the nuclear threat. “Nuclear strategy” is a complete illusion, even an oxymoron. Strategy has to do with clearly linking tactics to achievable objectives. Due to the inherent ecological destructiveness of nuclear warfare it’s impossible to link it to moral or acceptable political ends. Some military heads understand this better than some heads of state. And the NPT was always intended to go hand in hand with nuclear disarmament. But this hasn’t happened. If the US or other nuclear powers can justify keeping their arsenal as a deterrent, then why not all countries! After the invasion of Iraq on trumped-up claims about WMD’s, many smaller countries may think they have to have nuclear weapons to deter big-power aggression. The leaders of North Korea continue to play on national fears of a US invasion stemming from the Korean War. President Bush was already threatening an invasion of Iran, before things bogged-down militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. Further, Obama making military threats for non-compliance with the NPT, when the US is itself in non-compliance, doesn't really help. And it’s still a toss-up what kind of administration will replace Obama.
We must avoid a tipping point in nuclear proliferation. Obama’s initiatives are a start, though the recent Nuclear Security Summit has been advanced narrowly as a way to avert “nuclear terrorism”. Yet, to even do this will require continual nuclear weapon reductions going hand in hand with non-proliferation measures. And it will also require the continual shift toward non-nuclear energy. A normative and ethical shift, which sees nuclear weapons for what they are, a crime against humanity and nature, is urgently required. This is a prerequisite for humanity’s transition to sustainability.
~ ~ ~ ~
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns and other non-nuclear resources available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
OVERCOMING OUR DENIAL ABOUT NUCLEAR BOMBS
by Oscar » Tue May 04, 2010 6:20 pm
OVERCOMING OUR DENIAL ABOUT NUCLEAR BOMBS
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan April 30, 2010
Saskatchewan is among a handful of places on the planet that has played a major role in the proliferation of nuclear bombs. But for the most part, we don’t yet know our history.
The Beaverlodge mine which opened near Uranium City in 1953 provided uranium for the US nuclear arsenal until the late 1960s. It’s estimated that Canadian-supplied uranium fuelled one-third of the US arsenal at the time. In the late 1970s, the Cluff Lake mine, a joint venture of the NDP crown, Saskatchewan Mining and Development Corporation (SMDC) and Cogema, began providing uranium to France even though it hadn’t yet signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and was still doing atmospheric testing. (Cogema is part of the French state consortium, now known as Areva, which is involved in everything from nuclear power to nuclear weapons to nuclear waste reprocessing, and recently sat on the Saskatchewan government-appointed Uranium Development Partnership (UDP).) When uranium exported by Cameco is enriched in Kentucky to fuel US light-water nuclear power plants, it leaves massive depleted uranium (DU). This is then pooled and becomes available to the US for making radiological, DU weapons which have been used in recent wars, especially Iraq, and for making H-Bombs. Meanwhile all this uranium mining in Saskatchewan’s North leaves toxic and radioactive wastes which will endanger watersheds, habitats and environmental health for thousands of years.
Other places have also played a role in nuclear weaponry, including around Elliot Lake, Ontario, where uranium mining has impacted the Serpent River First Nations. But we still seem to know more about the nuclear legacy in other countries. The April 2010 The Walrus carried a potent picture essay, entitled “Dark Element”, about uranium mining near the city of Zhovti Vody. It is sub-titled “A Ukrainian prairie city built in the Soviet era to supply ore for nuclear weapons reckons with the industry’s deadly legacy.” I sometimes wonder if the scarcity of investigative journalism into this deadly legacy within Canada is because the uranium mines are far away from large southern cities, and near First Nations and Métis communities.
CANADA’S COMPLICITY
Saskatchewan’s involvement in nuclear weaponry has been part of Canada’s larger complicity. During WWII the federal crown, Eldorado Nuclear, which was privatized to help form Cameco in the 1980s, re-opened its mine at Port Radium NWT to provide some of the uranium used by the US Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs. This uranium was refined at the Port Hope, Ontario refinery before going to fuel the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Had it not been for the broad-based peace movement in Canada, armed-and-ready nuclear weapons (the Bomarc missile) would have been stationed on Canadian soil in the early 1960s. But our complicity in nuclear weaponry continued. The Chalk River NRU nuclear reactor that started up in 1957 and has been in the news so much for leaking radioactive tritium and failing to deliver isotopes for nuclear medicine, was initially designed to produce plutonium, some of which went to the US weapons program. The Candu nuclear plant design coming out of Chalk River research uses natural uranium and can provide plutonium. This Canadian technology helped India develop the bomb in the 1970s, and contributed to the arms race with China and Pakistan. India still refuses to sign the NPT; meanwhile the marketer of the Candu, the Atomic Energy Corporation Ltd. (AECL), along with Cameco and Harper government officials, are negotiating nuclear technology and fuel export agreements with India. From its start the AECL has had a questionable track record; in 1973 it tried to sell the Candu to the military junta of Argentina, and in 1974 it tried to sell it to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Its marketing strategy highlighted the Candu’s ability to produce plutonium. (The history of Canada’s involvement in nuclear weapons is discussed in chapters 11 and 18 of my 2007 book Canada’s Deadly Secret.)
THE BUCK STOPS HERE
It’s always easier to point the finger at some other country for creating and escalating the global nuclear threat. But, as in ordinary life, we have to face up to and own our own responsibilities for doing harm if we are going to make amends. Saskatchewan governments of all stripes (CCF, Liberal, NDP, Tory and Sask Party) have either been in denial of or out-rightly distorted our historical complicity in nuclear weaponry. This is partly because so much of the development of this industry has occurred in secrecy; it wasn’t until 1962 that Eldorado Nuclear even admitted it was involved in the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. While Premier Tommy Douglas supported the widespread call for nuclear disarmament in the late 1950s, Saskatchewan people were totally unaware that uranium was being shipped across the border to make nuclear bombs. Governments that sold uranium to France, even though it refused to sign the NPT, or who continue to ship uranium to the US which, when enriched, leaves stockpiles of DU for weapons, are still engaging in denial or deception.
The recent Nuclear Security Summit hosted by Obama began to pin-point loop-holes that encourage nuclear proliferation. After decades of denying that the Chalk River isotope plant accumulates highly enriched uranium (HEU), and that enriched uranium is the easiest way to make a bomb, the federal government has finally agreed to ship this spent fuel back to the US for conversion into non-weapons material. Even though a few years ago some of us pointed out to the CBC (The Current) and Globe and Mail the danger from HEU, it took the Obama Summit for this to be reported.
Nevertheless, this is a good, small step. If Canada is to play any role in overcoming the threat from nuclear proliferation, we’ll have to do some serious soul-searching. Saskatchewan, among the largest uranium-producing economies on the planet, should look honestly at its complicity in profiting from nuclear bombs. We won’t get to a sustainable society by burying our heads in the sand or lying to ourselves.
- - - -
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns are available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan April 30, 2010
Saskatchewan is among a handful of places on the planet that has played a major role in the proliferation of nuclear bombs. But for the most part, we don’t yet know our history.
The Beaverlodge mine which opened near Uranium City in 1953 provided uranium for the US nuclear arsenal until the late 1960s. It’s estimated that Canadian-supplied uranium fuelled one-third of the US arsenal at the time. In the late 1970s, the Cluff Lake mine, a joint venture of the NDP crown, Saskatchewan Mining and Development Corporation (SMDC) and Cogema, began providing uranium to France even though it hadn’t yet signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and was still doing atmospheric testing. (Cogema is part of the French state consortium, now known as Areva, which is involved in everything from nuclear power to nuclear weapons to nuclear waste reprocessing, and recently sat on the Saskatchewan government-appointed Uranium Development Partnership (UDP).) When uranium exported by Cameco is enriched in Kentucky to fuel US light-water nuclear power plants, it leaves massive depleted uranium (DU). This is then pooled and becomes available to the US for making radiological, DU weapons which have been used in recent wars, especially Iraq, and for making H-Bombs. Meanwhile all this uranium mining in Saskatchewan’s North leaves toxic and radioactive wastes which will endanger watersheds, habitats and environmental health for thousands of years.
Other places have also played a role in nuclear weaponry, including around Elliot Lake, Ontario, where uranium mining has impacted the Serpent River First Nations. But we still seem to know more about the nuclear legacy in other countries. The April 2010 The Walrus carried a potent picture essay, entitled “Dark Element”, about uranium mining near the city of Zhovti Vody. It is sub-titled “A Ukrainian prairie city built in the Soviet era to supply ore for nuclear weapons reckons with the industry’s deadly legacy.” I sometimes wonder if the scarcity of investigative journalism into this deadly legacy within Canada is because the uranium mines are far away from large southern cities, and near First Nations and Métis communities.
CANADA’S COMPLICITY
Saskatchewan’s involvement in nuclear weaponry has been part of Canada’s larger complicity. During WWII the federal crown, Eldorado Nuclear, which was privatized to help form Cameco in the 1980s, re-opened its mine at Port Radium NWT to provide some of the uranium used by the US Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs. This uranium was refined at the Port Hope, Ontario refinery before going to fuel the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Had it not been for the broad-based peace movement in Canada, armed-and-ready nuclear weapons (the Bomarc missile) would have been stationed on Canadian soil in the early 1960s. But our complicity in nuclear weaponry continued. The Chalk River NRU nuclear reactor that started up in 1957 and has been in the news so much for leaking radioactive tritium and failing to deliver isotopes for nuclear medicine, was initially designed to produce plutonium, some of which went to the US weapons program. The Candu nuclear plant design coming out of Chalk River research uses natural uranium and can provide plutonium. This Canadian technology helped India develop the bomb in the 1970s, and contributed to the arms race with China and Pakistan. India still refuses to sign the NPT; meanwhile the marketer of the Candu, the Atomic Energy Corporation Ltd. (AECL), along with Cameco and Harper government officials, are negotiating nuclear technology and fuel export agreements with India. From its start the AECL has had a questionable track record; in 1973 it tried to sell the Candu to the military junta of Argentina, and in 1974 it tried to sell it to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Its marketing strategy highlighted the Candu’s ability to produce plutonium. (The history of Canada’s involvement in nuclear weapons is discussed in chapters 11 and 18 of my 2007 book Canada’s Deadly Secret.)
THE BUCK STOPS HERE
It’s always easier to point the finger at some other country for creating and escalating the global nuclear threat. But, as in ordinary life, we have to face up to and own our own responsibilities for doing harm if we are going to make amends. Saskatchewan governments of all stripes (CCF, Liberal, NDP, Tory and Sask Party) have either been in denial of or out-rightly distorted our historical complicity in nuclear weaponry. This is partly because so much of the development of this industry has occurred in secrecy; it wasn’t until 1962 that Eldorado Nuclear even admitted it was involved in the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. While Premier Tommy Douglas supported the widespread call for nuclear disarmament in the late 1950s, Saskatchewan people were totally unaware that uranium was being shipped across the border to make nuclear bombs. Governments that sold uranium to France, even though it refused to sign the NPT, or who continue to ship uranium to the US which, when enriched, leaves stockpiles of DU for weapons, are still engaging in denial or deception.
The recent Nuclear Security Summit hosted by Obama began to pin-point loop-holes that encourage nuclear proliferation. After decades of denying that the Chalk River isotope plant accumulates highly enriched uranium (HEU), and that enriched uranium is the easiest way to make a bomb, the federal government has finally agreed to ship this spent fuel back to the US for conversion into non-weapons material. Even though a few years ago some of us pointed out to the CBC (The Current) and Globe and Mail the danger from HEU, it took the Obama Summit for this to be reported.
Nevertheless, this is a good, small step. If Canada is to play any role in overcoming the threat from nuclear proliferation, we’ll have to do some serious soul-searching. Saskatchewan, among the largest uranium-producing economies on the planet, should look honestly at its complicity in profiting from nuclear bombs. We won’t get to a sustainable society by burying our heads in the sand or lying to ourselves.
- - - -
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns are available at http://jimharding.brinkster.net
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
OVERCOMING INTERNATIONAL HYPOCRISY ON NON-PROLIFERATION
by Oscar » Thu May 13, 2010 8:31 pm
OVERCOMING INTERNATIONAL HYPOCRISY ON NON-PROLIFERATION
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan May 7, 2010
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon reminds us that “a world free of nuclear weapons would be a global public good of the highest order.” Getting there is the challenge. One prerequisite is accurate and balanced understanding of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which comes under its mandatory 5-year review this May. These are vital negotiations for the 200 countries involved; forty years after the treaty humanity faces a dangerous tipping point regarding nuclear proliferation.
The NPT is mostly known for its intent to “prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology.” But it has two other objectives. Rarely reported is its objective “to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.” And, most problematic and standing in the way of the other objectives yet rarely scrutinized, is its commitment to “promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
DOUBLE STANDARDS
The NPT Preamble highlights “the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war…” The intention of all parties to the treaty is “to achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to undertake effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament.” This was agreed to in 1970, yet throughout this period the media largely ignored the continuing failure of the big nuclear weapons states – US, Russia, France, Britain and China – to move asap “in the direction of nuclear disarmament”. Rather, most critical reporting has been about big power jockeying over small countries, like Iran, in their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Before today’s focus on Iran, the “free press” helped perpetuate the myth that Iraq had nuclear weapons, which then became justification for the invasion by the US and UK. The media never mentioned that the NPT Preamble reiterates the principle of non-aggression from the UN Charter, saying “States must refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and independence of any State.” Nor has there been any ongoing mainstream reporting that the US and UK used radiological, depleted uranium (DU) weapons in the war on Iraq, in breach of the NPT.
This big-power bias perpetuates disinformation. If I asked which countries had signed the NPT, "Iran or Israel? North Korea or India?”, I bet most Canadians would say “Israel and India”. And they’d be wrong. But, in view of the way proliferation is used and reported as a geo-political football, their mistake would be understandable.
There are both rights and obligations under the NPT and North Korea has clearly “lapsed” on the latter. Under Article IV, Iran has the “inalienable right…to develop, research, production (sic) and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”. However under Article III it has the responsibility to prevent the “diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or others explosive devices.” With its uranium enrichment program Iran must be held to the latter. But why such an exclusive focus on Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, when Israel has already developed nuclear weapons while completely ignoring the NPT? Or why isn’t there some soul-searching about why Canada, an early signatory to the NPT, supplied “weapons technology” to India, who still refuses to sign the NPT? Or what about the US and UK diverting depleted uranium from so-called “peaceful” nuclear power for “nuclear weapons or other explosive devices”?
OVERCOMING NUCLEAR STALEMATE
Such international hypocrisy makes it hard to progress towards nuclear disarmament. To overcome the double standard we’ll have to understand how proliferation looks to smaller powers. Obama’s recent Nuclear Security Summit got widespread coverage in the western media; yet how many Canadians know about the Conference on nuclear disarmament held in Tehran this past April 17-18? While it was dismissed by the EU and the US, it had low-level delegates from China and Russia. Uganda, Turkey and Lebanon, all non-permanent UN Security Council members, also attended. As the Foreign Editor wrote for the April 19th The Independent, this conference took place “with some support from developing countries tired of the double standard, they claim (with some justification) that the West maintains.” The conference ended with the call for “complete overhaul of the 40 year old NPT and for Israel’s nuclear weapons to be brought under a UN inspection regime.”
The US was sometimes referred to as the “only atomic criminal”, which is clearly propaganda that may be part of Iran’s strategy to avoid further NPT sanctions. But it’s also true that the only country that has ever used an atomic bomb on another country is the US. We can’t expect to see serious progress towards non-proliferation and disarmament while western countries, including Canada, deny their complicity in the nuclear threat. Of course we don’t want Iran to join Israel as a nuclear weapons power and to see an arms race in the Middle East. But the way to prevent this is not by demonizing or threatening Iran, as was deceptively done with Iraq, while ignoring Israel’s role in proliferation.
Further, while the US targeted Iran it negotiated a unilateral agreement to share nuclear technology with non-NPT member India. And Canada is trying to cash-in on this with nuclear and uranium sales. In its 2009 report, “Eliminating Nuclear Threats” the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation says “the Indian agreement will make it considerably more difficult to extract stronger terms than those won by India.” This US-India Agreement will make it harder to bring countries outside, or in non-compliance with, the NPT into binding non-nuclear weapons agreements, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. So how can the US ride its high-horse regarding non-proliferation?
Each special interest claims it needs nuclear weapons as deterrents; however we know that all of humanity is threatened by continued proliferation. So while Israel may try to justify its covert nuclear weapons program as a defensive act against those who want Israel destroyed, we can see how other Middle Eastern countries, who have already lost military conflicts with the regional military-superpower, Israel, might also want nuclear weapons as a deterrent. This became even truer after Israel unilaterally bombed the French-made Osirak reactor near Bagdad in 1981, and especially after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A similarly explosive dynamic exists between India and Pakistan, already nuclear weapons states refusing to sign the NPT, facing serious border disputes. But to begin to resolve such regional nuclear disputes we have to go further. The International Commission notes that Israel, India and Pakistan “… will not eliminate their nuclear deterrents unless and until China, the US and others have done so…”
If we want to see real progress towards non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, so that our children can work for a sustainable society with some basic international peace and security, we need to challenge the hypocrisy that plagues these negotiations. A good place to start is right here in Saskatchewan.
http://jimharding.brinkster.net
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan May 7, 2010
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon reminds us that “a world free of nuclear weapons would be a global public good of the highest order.” Getting there is the challenge. One prerequisite is accurate and balanced understanding of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which comes under its mandatory 5-year review this May. These are vital negotiations for the 200 countries involved; forty years after the treaty humanity faces a dangerous tipping point regarding nuclear proliferation.
The NPT is mostly known for its intent to “prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology.” But it has two other objectives. Rarely reported is its objective “to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.” And, most problematic and standing in the way of the other objectives yet rarely scrutinized, is its commitment to “promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
DOUBLE STANDARDS
The NPT Preamble highlights “the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war…” The intention of all parties to the treaty is “to achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to undertake effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament.” This was agreed to in 1970, yet throughout this period the media largely ignored the continuing failure of the big nuclear weapons states – US, Russia, France, Britain and China – to move asap “in the direction of nuclear disarmament”. Rather, most critical reporting has been about big power jockeying over small countries, like Iran, in their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Before today’s focus on Iran, the “free press” helped perpetuate the myth that Iraq had nuclear weapons, which then became justification for the invasion by the US and UK. The media never mentioned that the NPT Preamble reiterates the principle of non-aggression from the UN Charter, saying “States must refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and independence of any State.” Nor has there been any ongoing mainstream reporting that the US and UK used radiological, depleted uranium (DU) weapons in the war on Iraq, in breach of the NPT.
This big-power bias perpetuates disinformation. If I asked which countries had signed the NPT, "Iran or Israel? North Korea or India?”, I bet most Canadians would say “Israel and India”. And they’d be wrong. But, in view of the way proliferation is used and reported as a geo-political football, their mistake would be understandable.
There are both rights and obligations under the NPT and North Korea has clearly “lapsed” on the latter. Under Article IV, Iran has the “inalienable right…to develop, research, production (sic) and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”. However under Article III it has the responsibility to prevent the “diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or others explosive devices.” With its uranium enrichment program Iran must be held to the latter. But why such an exclusive focus on Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, when Israel has already developed nuclear weapons while completely ignoring the NPT? Or why isn’t there some soul-searching about why Canada, an early signatory to the NPT, supplied “weapons technology” to India, who still refuses to sign the NPT? Or what about the US and UK diverting depleted uranium from so-called “peaceful” nuclear power for “nuclear weapons or other explosive devices”?
OVERCOMING NUCLEAR STALEMATE
Such international hypocrisy makes it hard to progress towards nuclear disarmament. To overcome the double standard we’ll have to understand how proliferation looks to smaller powers. Obama’s recent Nuclear Security Summit got widespread coverage in the western media; yet how many Canadians know about the Conference on nuclear disarmament held in Tehran this past April 17-18? While it was dismissed by the EU and the US, it had low-level delegates from China and Russia. Uganda, Turkey and Lebanon, all non-permanent UN Security Council members, also attended. As the Foreign Editor wrote for the April 19th The Independent, this conference took place “with some support from developing countries tired of the double standard, they claim (with some justification) that the West maintains.” The conference ended with the call for “complete overhaul of the 40 year old NPT and for Israel’s nuclear weapons to be brought under a UN inspection regime.”
The US was sometimes referred to as the “only atomic criminal”, which is clearly propaganda that may be part of Iran’s strategy to avoid further NPT sanctions. But it’s also true that the only country that has ever used an atomic bomb on another country is the US. We can’t expect to see serious progress towards non-proliferation and disarmament while western countries, including Canada, deny their complicity in the nuclear threat. Of course we don’t want Iran to join Israel as a nuclear weapons power and to see an arms race in the Middle East. But the way to prevent this is not by demonizing or threatening Iran, as was deceptively done with Iraq, while ignoring Israel’s role in proliferation.
Further, while the US targeted Iran it negotiated a unilateral agreement to share nuclear technology with non-NPT member India. And Canada is trying to cash-in on this with nuclear and uranium sales. In its 2009 report, “Eliminating Nuclear Threats” the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation says “the Indian agreement will make it considerably more difficult to extract stronger terms than those won by India.” This US-India Agreement will make it harder to bring countries outside, or in non-compliance with, the NPT into binding non-nuclear weapons agreements, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. So how can the US ride its high-horse regarding non-proliferation?
Each special interest claims it needs nuclear weapons as deterrents; however we know that all of humanity is threatened by continued proliferation. So while Israel may try to justify its covert nuclear weapons program as a defensive act against those who want Israel destroyed, we can see how other Middle Eastern countries, who have already lost military conflicts with the regional military-superpower, Israel, might also want nuclear weapons as a deterrent. This became even truer after Israel unilaterally bombed the French-made Osirak reactor near Bagdad in 1981, and especially after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A similarly explosive dynamic exists between India and Pakistan, already nuclear weapons states refusing to sign the NPT, facing serious border disputes. But to begin to resolve such regional nuclear disputes we have to go further. The International Commission notes that Israel, India and Pakistan “… will not eliminate their nuclear deterrents unless and until China, the US and others have done so…”
If we want to see real progress towards non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, so that our children can work for a sustainable society with some basic international peace and security, we need to challenge the hypocrisy that plagues these negotiations. A good place to start is right here in Saskatchewan.
http://jimharding.brinkster.net
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
WHY WE’D BETTER LEARN FROM THE GULF OIL SPILL
by Oscar » Wed May 19, 2010 3:39 pm
WHY WE’D BETTER LEARN FROM THE GULF OIL SPILL
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan May 14, 2010
Saskatchewan’s economy is second only to Alberta’s in oil and gas export. The fossil fuels mostly go south to the US, which, along with China, is the biggest energy glutton on the planet. This is an inherently unsustainable energy system and the blowback comes in many natural and human-made forms. People in the Gulf of Mexico are just recuperating from Hurricane Katrina, an extreme storm likely linked to the global build-up of greenhouse gases. Hopefully the oil gushing from British Petroleum’s (BP’s) botched deep sea drilling will be a big wake up call for Americans. Facing intense industry and Republican lobbying prior to this catastrophe, Obama lifted the ban on off-shore drilling. California’s Republican Governor has now called for a complete ban on all off-shore drilling.
The Gulf disaster began April 20th with an explosion and fire at BP’s Deepwater Horizon well. Two days later, the platform sunk, leaving seventeen crew injured and another eleven missing. By early May it came out that BP greatly underestimated the spill and at least 5,000 barrels were leaking daily. More recent estimates are much higher. By mid-May at least four million gallons had already leaked. After attempts to seal the leaks failed BP lowered a huge structure onto the unstable seabed to try to contain the leak, but this also failed; the gas, crystallizing in such frigid water, plugged the outlet. Then a pipe was inserted into the well to try to pump some leaking oil into tankers. With rough weather, skimmer vessels haven’t been effective and the oil slicks can’t be burned, and it’s uncertain whether the hundreds of miles of inflatable booms will be able to keep oil from reaching the fragile coastline. Even before any oil was visible, coastal people were complaining of sickening fumes wafting across the water.
AN IMPOSSIBLE CATASTROPHE
This is another ecological catastrophe that wasn’t to happen. The AP reported that BP’s 2009 Environmental Impact analysis said the chances of such an accident were “virtually impossible”, adding that because the rig was 48 miles out to sea any spill would be dispersed. BP was wrong on the probability, and their back-up shut-off valve totally failed. The Gulf Restoration Network claims that BP lacked the technology required to deal with drilling at such depths. BP however continues to promote the ecocidal ethic that “the solution to pollution is dilution”.
Corporations, and governments wanting to give them free reign can’t see the world in ecological terms; profitability not sustainability is their bottom line. And it’s in their interest to oversimplify risk and downplay full costs. Though BP says it will pay for clean-up, its lawyers will fight to displace the full ecological costs. Company officials are already trying to shift responsibility onto their rig operator, Transocean. Haliburton, once headed by Dick Cheney, which profited so much from the war on Iraq, is also involved.
The Gulf is a very bad place for such a spill. There is a massive shoreline along the half-circle that forms the Gulf, with some of the richest biodiversity (e.g. the Everglades) in the Americas. Also the “loop” current can take oil around Florida and into the Gulf Stream, which goes towards Canada’s coastline. The thousands of volunteers who frantically try to reduce the damage to their homeland will be exposed to extremely toxic crude oil fumes. By mid-May the spill had already formed a slick 200 by 100 km, threatening birds, dolphins, shrimps, oysters, crabs and fish. The Gulf fishery is the most abundant source of seafood for all of the U.S. so this spill is probably destined to be economically as well as ecologically worse than the Exxon Valdez spill of 11 million gallons off Alaska in 1989.
WATER: THE CANADIAN CONNECTION
Saskatchewan’s political leaders of both parties have steadily moved our economy to greater dependence on fossil fuels. And we’re among the highest per capita carbon emitters on the planet – 74 tonnes last year. While we are not engaged in offshore drilling, the companies we deal with are. BP could soon be operating in our back yard, with its planned $1.5 billion Sunrise tar sands project in Alberta. And water is not only threatened by offshore drilling; the tar sands are under growing global criticism for their contamination of waterways. To produce one barrel of oil requires 2 to 4 barrels of water, and 90% of the waste water must be contained in toxic tailing ponds.
Federal Environment Minister Prentice has cynically tried to use the Gulf disaster to make the tar sands seem more environmentally sound. And BP claims its proposed steam-assisted tar sand extraction will contaminate less land, and that the use of aquifers will affect fewer waterways. But this too is largely untested technology and some industry proponents are even advocating the use of small nuclear reactors to produce the steam. And do we really want BP “experimenting” with our aquifers? There are signs of a rebellion brewing among some unconvinced stockholders. The lobby group Fair Pensions which is trying to democratize international investment wants disclosure of more information about BP’s Sunrise project. Unfortunately, many shareholders place short-term earnings above sustainability, and have supported a 40% increase in pay for BP’s CEO, to total $4 million annually, as a reward for lowering costs while increasing oil production. Corporate cost-cutting to increase profit-margins often means more risks of catastrophes such as we now see in the Gulf. If Obama succeeds in getting BP to pay costs, beyond the $75 million cap presently on its liability, BP’s profits will shrink, as they should.
BP distracts public attention from ecological risks by exaggerating job opportunities with its megaprojects. But a job on an ocean oil rig or in the tar sands, dangerously exploiting a non-renewable toxic resource, is never equivalent to a job harvesting a renewable resource. All those who make a living off the massive fishery in the Gulf now have their source of income threatened, and the jobs from the oil rig are also gone. Protecting the Gulf ecology and fishery by not allowing inherently dangerous off-shore drilling will ensure far more jobs into the future. The same principle holds when comparing jobs from the tar sands with sustainable jobs provided by protecting ecology. Sustainability requires that we do the jobs’ math accurately.
Executives were celebrating BP’s safety record just prior to the methane bubble coming up from the ocean floor and exploding. This is a wake-up call for us all, whether we live close to a fishery or to a proposed tar sands project. Our response needs to go beyond party politics; sustainability will and should alter the nature of political priorities. Party politics needs to be rejuvenated with participatory politics; corporate-backed governments need to be replaced by citizen-backed ones. And soon, for the planet and all life that depends upon its quality of water depends on this.
http://jimharding.brinkster.net
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan May 14, 2010
Saskatchewan’s economy is second only to Alberta’s in oil and gas export. The fossil fuels mostly go south to the US, which, along with China, is the biggest energy glutton on the planet. This is an inherently unsustainable energy system and the blowback comes in many natural and human-made forms. People in the Gulf of Mexico are just recuperating from Hurricane Katrina, an extreme storm likely linked to the global build-up of greenhouse gases. Hopefully the oil gushing from British Petroleum’s (BP’s) botched deep sea drilling will be a big wake up call for Americans. Facing intense industry and Republican lobbying prior to this catastrophe, Obama lifted the ban on off-shore drilling. California’s Republican Governor has now called for a complete ban on all off-shore drilling.
The Gulf disaster began April 20th with an explosion and fire at BP’s Deepwater Horizon well. Two days later, the platform sunk, leaving seventeen crew injured and another eleven missing. By early May it came out that BP greatly underestimated the spill and at least 5,000 barrels were leaking daily. More recent estimates are much higher. By mid-May at least four million gallons had already leaked. After attempts to seal the leaks failed BP lowered a huge structure onto the unstable seabed to try to contain the leak, but this also failed; the gas, crystallizing in such frigid water, plugged the outlet. Then a pipe was inserted into the well to try to pump some leaking oil into tankers. With rough weather, skimmer vessels haven’t been effective and the oil slicks can’t be burned, and it’s uncertain whether the hundreds of miles of inflatable booms will be able to keep oil from reaching the fragile coastline. Even before any oil was visible, coastal people were complaining of sickening fumes wafting across the water.
AN IMPOSSIBLE CATASTROPHE
This is another ecological catastrophe that wasn’t to happen. The AP reported that BP’s 2009 Environmental Impact analysis said the chances of such an accident were “virtually impossible”, adding that because the rig was 48 miles out to sea any spill would be dispersed. BP was wrong on the probability, and their back-up shut-off valve totally failed. The Gulf Restoration Network claims that BP lacked the technology required to deal with drilling at such depths. BP however continues to promote the ecocidal ethic that “the solution to pollution is dilution”.
Corporations, and governments wanting to give them free reign can’t see the world in ecological terms; profitability not sustainability is their bottom line. And it’s in their interest to oversimplify risk and downplay full costs. Though BP says it will pay for clean-up, its lawyers will fight to displace the full ecological costs. Company officials are already trying to shift responsibility onto their rig operator, Transocean. Haliburton, once headed by Dick Cheney, which profited so much from the war on Iraq, is also involved.
The Gulf is a very bad place for such a spill. There is a massive shoreline along the half-circle that forms the Gulf, with some of the richest biodiversity (e.g. the Everglades) in the Americas. Also the “loop” current can take oil around Florida and into the Gulf Stream, which goes towards Canada’s coastline. The thousands of volunteers who frantically try to reduce the damage to their homeland will be exposed to extremely toxic crude oil fumes. By mid-May the spill had already formed a slick 200 by 100 km, threatening birds, dolphins, shrimps, oysters, crabs and fish. The Gulf fishery is the most abundant source of seafood for all of the U.S. so this spill is probably destined to be economically as well as ecologically worse than the Exxon Valdez spill of 11 million gallons off Alaska in 1989.
WATER: THE CANADIAN CONNECTION
Saskatchewan’s political leaders of both parties have steadily moved our economy to greater dependence on fossil fuels. And we’re among the highest per capita carbon emitters on the planet – 74 tonnes last year. While we are not engaged in offshore drilling, the companies we deal with are. BP could soon be operating in our back yard, with its planned $1.5 billion Sunrise tar sands project in Alberta. And water is not only threatened by offshore drilling; the tar sands are under growing global criticism for their contamination of waterways. To produce one barrel of oil requires 2 to 4 barrels of water, and 90% of the waste water must be contained in toxic tailing ponds.
Federal Environment Minister Prentice has cynically tried to use the Gulf disaster to make the tar sands seem more environmentally sound. And BP claims its proposed steam-assisted tar sand extraction will contaminate less land, and that the use of aquifers will affect fewer waterways. But this too is largely untested technology and some industry proponents are even advocating the use of small nuclear reactors to produce the steam. And do we really want BP “experimenting” with our aquifers? There are signs of a rebellion brewing among some unconvinced stockholders. The lobby group Fair Pensions which is trying to democratize international investment wants disclosure of more information about BP’s Sunrise project. Unfortunately, many shareholders place short-term earnings above sustainability, and have supported a 40% increase in pay for BP’s CEO, to total $4 million annually, as a reward for lowering costs while increasing oil production. Corporate cost-cutting to increase profit-margins often means more risks of catastrophes such as we now see in the Gulf. If Obama succeeds in getting BP to pay costs, beyond the $75 million cap presently on its liability, BP’s profits will shrink, as they should.
BP distracts public attention from ecological risks by exaggerating job opportunities with its megaprojects. But a job on an ocean oil rig or in the tar sands, dangerously exploiting a non-renewable toxic resource, is never equivalent to a job harvesting a renewable resource. All those who make a living off the massive fishery in the Gulf now have their source of income threatened, and the jobs from the oil rig are also gone. Protecting the Gulf ecology and fishery by not allowing inherently dangerous off-shore drilling will ensure far more jobs into the future. The same principle holds when comparing jobs from the tar sands with sustainable jobs provided by protecting ecology. Sustainability requires that we do the jobs’ math accurately.
Executives were celebrating BP’s safety record just prior to the methane bubble coming up from the ocean floor and exploding. This is a wake-up call for us all, whether we live close to a fishery or to a proposed tar sands project. Our response needs to go beyond party politics; sustainability will and should alter the nature of political priorities. Party politics needs to be rejuvenated with participatory politics; corporate-backed governments need to be replaced by citizen-backed ones. And soon, for the planet and all life that depends upon its quality of water depends on this.
http://jimharding.brinkster.net
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DO WE WANT SASKATCHEWAN TO BECOME A NUCLEAR DUMP?
by Oscar » Fri May 28, 2010 10:25 am
DO WE WANT SASKATCHEWAN TO BECOME A NUCLEAR DUMP?
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan - May 21, 2010
The Sask Party government can’t make up its mind whether it wants Saskatchewan to become a nuclear waste dump. In March 2009, when the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) recommended we take nuclear wastes from afar, several Ministers were quick to distance the government from this. But on December 17th, Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd reversed this, saying the government is open to considering a geological repository if a “willing community” steps forward. This off-again, on-again approach Is no way to make a decision with such ramifications. The public deserves to get solid background on the matter, and we might ask: why isn’t the mainstream media supplying this so that an informed decision can be made?
EUROPEAN BACKGROUND
The European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) was formed in 1957 to establish safety standards for nuclear power plants. Since then accidents, near accidents, spills and the build-up of wastes have made the public increasingly wary about the safety of nuclear power. After the Chernobyl catastrophe, which is far worse than previously officially claimed, several countries decided to phase out nuclear power to prevent future accidents and stop the further build-up of radioactive wastes.
But the industry fought back with subtle new “public acceptance” campaigns. In June 2009 the EU became the first region to make the safety principles of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA legally binding for all member states. These pertain to construction, operation, decommissioning, waste management and “preparedness for radiation incidents”. The decision was a double edged sword. While it may help the industry take another run at regaining public trust, the need for such measures implies that nuclear power is inherently risky.
Nuclear proponents support standardized regulations as a way to get nuclear power accepted as a UN “Clean Development Mechanism” for addressing the climate crisis. But it is also part of a financial and export strategy. Speaking at the March 2010 OECD conference on nuclear power, French President Sarkozy complained “I do not accept the shunning of nuclear projects by international financing.” With 58 nuclear plants providing 80% of its electricity, France has gone farther down the nuclear path than any country, and is less flexible to shift to cheaper renewables. Its state corporation Areva, the largest nuclear consortium on the planet, which operates uranium mines in Saskatchewan’s North, wants a nuclear export market for its European Pressurized Reactor (EPR). Facing huge cost overruns with its EPR mega-projects in Finland and France, and having a growing nuclear debt, French authorities want to spread the financial risk more widely. Meanwhile France prefers to remain mostly silent about its nuclear waste build-up.
Things differ in Germany, where a Social Democratic-Green alliance decided to stop nuclear waste build-up and reduce the chance of accidents by phasing out its 17 nuclear plants. The government announced a ten-year moratorium on its nuclear waste repository in old salt mines at Gorleben when collapsing walls had to be shored up with tones of concrete, costing taxpayers $1.5 billion. This year the Centre Right government of Angela Merkel announced it would restart the project while admitting it could take 25 years before a final decision is made on whether this plan was feasible. The German Minister announcing this said “we simply can’t use excuses for what’s the best alternative to avoid taking responsibility”, which might ring true if the government maintained its commitment to phasing out nuclear power. Government “moralism” is exposed however, as reopening the Gorleben repository is being used as an excuse to extend the time-line for Germany’s operating plants, creating even more nuclear wastes. This decision just pushes the burden and costs for nuclear wastes onto yet another generation.
Britain is even more hypocritical. The previous Labour government approved a new fleet of ten nuclear plants, the first one to come on stream at Hinkley Point in 2017. This expansion was done without any plan for dealing with wastes from existing plants, which will face decommissioning soon. The UK’s only “plan” is to let nuclear wastes accumulate for 160 years at new reactor sites. However, people in nearby communities were never consulted; the government was more concerned about fast-tracking its mega-energy projects than involving the public. This expansion of nuclear power without any plan for wastes undercuts the quest for sustainable energy and end-runs democracy. The Chair of the Parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee called the approach “bizarre.” Greenpeace added, “The National Policy Statements say nothing about nuclear waste because government and industry plans for dealing with highly radioactive spent fuel are non-existent.”
FROM YUCCA TO THE GNEP
The US is also engaging in nuclear double-think. Soon after being elected Obama pulled the plug on the Yucca Nevada nuclear waste repository on which $19 billion had already been spent. This put the US back to the starting line over what to do with its accumulating wastes. Meanwhile the US is considering licensing up to 30 new nuclear plants, none of which will be self-financing. Without tax credits, loan guarantees and other federal incentives these would all be non-starters. Why not fund cheaper renewable, which don’t create toxic, radioactive wastes?
Obama has also continued the Global Nuclear Energy Project or GNEP, started by his predecessor George Bush, to find a way to expand nuclear power while keeping nuclear weaponry out of the hands of non-allies. Uranium enrichment and nuclear waste reprocessing can be used to develop weaponry; that’s how existing nuclear powers got theirs. To Obama’s credit he cancelled Bush’s plan to restart nuclear waste reprocessing. However the GNEP’s proposal that uranium-producing regions take back nuclear wastes should be of uppermost concern for us. This would be great for the US, which has guaranteed access to Canada’s uranium under NAFTA, and no longer has a viable domestic nuclear waste project in the works. Saskatchewan becoming a nuclear dump would also be great for Ontario which has created over 90% of Canada’s nuclear wastes.
Was it pure coincidence that the UDP recommended that Saskatchewan “add value” to its uranium industry by becoming a nuclear waste dump? After UDP consultations showed 80% opposed nuclear power, the government rightfully rejected Bruce Power’s plans for nuclear plants along the North Saskatchewan River. But there was the same level of opposition to us becoming a nuclear dump. So why is the Sask Party government still supporting the industry-run, Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), locating a “willing community” to take radioactive wastes here?
When you look at all the smoke and mirrors going on about nuclear wastes in Europe and the US, why would we want to leave ourselves open to this? Does the industry think we are a push-over? Apparently, to settle this once and for all, Saskatchewan’s grass-roots will have to win a legislative ban on nuclear wastes, along the lines of what Manitoba and Quebec have already done. This work needs to begin very soon.
http://jimharding.brinkster.net
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan - May 21, 2010
The Sask Party government can’t make up its mind whether it wants Saskatchewan to become a nuclear waste dump. In March 2009, when the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) recommended we take nuclear wastes from afar, several Ministers were quick to distance the government from this. But on December 17th, Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd reversed this, saying the government is open to considering a geological repository if a “willing community” steps forward. This off-again, on-again approach Is no way to make a decision with such ramifications. The public deserves to get solid background on the matter, and we might ask: why isn’t the mainstream media supplying this so that an informed decision can be made?
EUROPEAN BACKGROUND
The European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) was formed in 1957 to establish safety standards for nuclear power plants. Since then accidents, near accidents, spills and the build-up of wastes have made the public increasingly wary about the safety of nuclear power. After the Chernobyl catastrophe, which is far worse than previously officially claimed, several countries decided to phase out nuclear power to prevent future accidents and stop the further build-up of radioactive wastes.
But the industry fought back with subtle new “public acceptance” campaigns. In June 2009 the EU became the first region to make the safety principles of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA legally binding for all member states. These pertain to construction, operation, decommissioning, waste management and “preparedness for radiation incidents”. The decision was a double edged sword. While it may help the industry take another run at regaining public trust, the need for such measures implies that nuclear power is inherently risky.
Nuclear proponents support standardized regulations as a way to get nuclear power accepted as a UN “Clean Development Mechanism” for addressing the climate crisis. But it is also part of a financial and export strategy. Speaking at the March 2010 OECD conference on nuclear power, French President Sarkozy complained “I do not accept the shunning of nuclear projects by international financing.” With 58 nuclear plants providing 80% of its electricity, France has gone farther down the nuclear path than any country, and is less flexible to shift to cheaper renewables. Its state corporation Areva, the largest nuclear consortium on the planet, which operates uranium mines in Saskatchewan’s North, wants a nuclear export market for its European Pressurized Reactor (EPR). Facing huge cost overruns with its EPR mega-projects in Finland and France, and having a growing nuclear debt, French authorities want to spread the financial risk more widely. Meanwhile France prefers to remain mostly silent about its nuclear waste build-up.
Things differ in Germany, where a Social Democratic-Green alliance decided to stop nuclear waste build-up and reduce the chance of accidents by phasing out its 17 nuclear plants. The government announced a ten-year moratorium on its nuclear waste repository in old salt mines at Gorleben when collapsing walls had to be shored up with tones of concrete, costing taxpayers $1.5 billion. This year the Centre Right government of Angela Merkel announced it would restart the project while admitting it could take 25 years before a final decision is made on whether this plan was feasible. The German Minister announcing this said “we simply can’t use excuses for what’s the best alternative to avoid taking responsibility”, which might ring true if the government maintained its commitment to phasing out nuclear power. Government “moralism” is exposed however, as reopening the Gorleben repository is being used as an excuse to extend the time-line for Germany’s operating plants, creating even more nuclear wastes. This decision just pushes the burden and costs for nuclear wastes onto yet another generation.
Britain is even more hypocritical. The previous Labour government approved a new fleet of ten nuclear plants, the first one to come on stream at Hinkley Point in 2017. This expansion was done without any plan for dealing with wastes from existing plants, which will face decommissioning soon. The UK’s only “plan” is to let nuclear wastes accumulate for 160 years at new reactor sites. However, people in nearby communities were never consulted; the government was more concerned about fast-tracking its mega-energy projects than involving the public. This expansion of nuclear power without any plan for wastes undercuts the quest for sustainable energy and end-runs democracy. The Chair of the Parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee called the approach “bizarre.” Greenpeace added, “The National Policy Statements say nothing about nuclear waste because government and industry plans for dealing with highly radioactive spent fuel are non-existent.”
FROM YUCCA TO THE GNEP
The US is also engaging in nuclear double-think. Soon after being elected Obama pulled the plug on the Yucca Nevada nuclear waste repository on which $19 billion had already been spent. This put the US back to the starting line over what to do with its accumulating wastes. Meanwhile the US is considering licensing up to 30 new nuclear plants, none of which will be self-financing. Without tax credits, loan guarantees and other federal incentives these would all be non-starters. Why not fund cheaper renewable, which don’t create toxic, radioactive wastes?
Obama has also continued the Global Nuclear Energy Project or GNEP, started by his predecessor George Bush, to find a way to expand nuclear power while keeping nuclear weaponry out of the hands of non-allies. Uranium enrichment and nuclear waste reprocessing can be used to develop weaponry; that’s how existing nuclear powers got theirs. To Obama’s credit he cancelled Bush’s plan to restart nuclear waste reprocessing. However the GNEP’s proposal that uranium-producing regions take back nuclear wastes should be of uppermost concern for us. This would be great for the US, which has guaranteed access to Canada’s uranium under NAFTA, and no longer has a viable domestic nuclear waste project in the works. Saskatchewan becoming a nuclear dump would also be great for Ontario which has created over 90% of Canada’s nuclear wastes.
Was it pure coincidence that the UDP recommended that Saskatchewan “add value” to its uranium industry by becoming a nuclear waste dump? After UDP consultations showed 80% opposed nuclear power, the government rightfully rejected Bruce Power’s plans for nuclear plants along the North Saskatchewan River. But there was the same level of opposition to us becoming a nuclear dump. So why is the Sask Party government still supporting the industry-run, Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), locating a “willing community” to take radioactive wastes here?
When you look at all the smoke and mirrors going on about nuclear wastes in Europe and the US, why would we want to leave ourselves open to this? Does the industry think we are a push-over? Apparently, to settle this once and for all, Saskatchewan’s grass-roots will have to win a legislative ban on nuclear wastes, along the lines of what Manitoba and Quebec have already done. This work needs to begin very soon.
http://jimharding.brinkster.net
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
A CLOSE LOOK AT A PRONUCLEAR “ENVIRONMENTALIST”
by Oscar » Fri Jun 04, 2010 4:24 pm
A CLOSE LOOK AT A PRONUCLEAR “ENVIRONMENTALIST”
By Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan June 4, 2010
It’s important to know “both sides” of the nuclear waste controversy now that Saskatchewan is being targeted as a nuclear dump. Even if you are skeptical of industry claims that a nuclear waste solution “is in the works”, and see this as a ploy to get more nuclear power plants approved, there’s lots to learn about the nuclear worldview.
Bruno Comby of the French-based “Environmentalist for Nuclear Energy” argues that “nuclear waste has undeniable environmental benefits”. Comby lists three benefits: its “small amount”, it not being “disposed of in the biosphere” and it being “almost totally confined.” He claims that “reprocessed radioactive waste” can be decreased “to the natural level of radioactivity of the original ore after only 5,000 years”, and that “safe, simply and efficient solutions exist to make nuclear waste inert” and to isolate it “from the biosphere until it is no longer toxic”. Finally he claims that a naturally-occurring nuclear reaction 2 billion years ago at Okla, Gabon shows that “waste, after being left unconfined…has not migrated more than three meters.” He concludes the nuclear waste issue is “technically and ecologically solved by a combination of reprocessing technology, vitrification and deep geological disposal.”
This is quite a mouthful. If it’s this “pat” then why, nearly 70 years after the first atom was split, are governments struggling with what to do with nuclear wastes? Comby’s argument is constructed to make real problems disappear. Notice his phrase “after only 5,000 years”, as though it would be acceptable to continue to create high-level wastes threatening environmental health for 50 generations. (It’s actually many more generations when you consider that plutonium has a half-life of 26,000 years.) He claims that because it takes a smaller quantity of uranium than oil to produce the same amount of energy, nuclear wastes are less problematic. But he completely ignores the build-up of long-lived radioactive uranium tailings, which are part of the nuclear waste stream; there are already more than 200 million tons of such tailings in Canada. Comby trivializes the toxicity of spent fuel, claiming that once plutonium is “reprocessed and recycled” as fuel for new reactors the remaining waste “is totally isolated from the environment”. Furthermore, Comby completely ignores the increased dangers of proliferation from plutonium becoming more available.
MORE DISINFORMATION
Comby states that over time nuclear wastes “…are only weakly radioactive. And these…are alpha-ray emitters from which we can easily protect ourselves.” Actually alpha radiation is highly mobile and much more dangerous than previously thought, and is highly carcinogenic if breathed and imbedded in our lungs. Radon gas, which after smoking is the greatest cause of lung cancer worldwide, is an alpha-emitter. But Comby tries to minimize the dangers from nuclear waste build-up by focusing on the dangers of other energy systems. He quotes pronuclear “gaia” theorist James Lovelock that “there is at present no other safe, practical and economic substitute for … burning carbon fuels.” Lovelock said this in 2003, when the global shift to renewables was already underway. By 2005 electricity from renewables surpassed that from nuclear power worldwide, and the gap keeps growing.
Comby tries to turn the table on non-nuclear environmentalists saying, “Since the energy resources of our planet are limited, it would be a great shame and highly unecological, not to recover such large amounts of energy-rich materials”, by which he means plutonium. He continues, “Reprocessing…as practiced at the La Hague plant in France (and) at Sellafield in UK…is ecologically sound.” Comby wrote this in the Journal of Environmental Studies in 2005 without careful research. As I’ve shown in a past column, the Sellafield reprocessing plant has been a financial and technical calamity, and is to be closed down.
Comby admits “the Earth was much more radioactive…when life first appeared”, but then makes the silly claim that “natural radiation has not stood in the way of evolution and development.” Going against mainstream science he claims “The weak doses of natural radioactivity, to which we have been exposed since the dawn of time, are not dangerous.” Mainstream science now admits there is no safe level of radiation; the smallest doses increase risks. And a global industrial experiment has already disproven Comby’s naïve view, for with the thinning of the ozone layer protecting us from UV rays we have seen a steep rise in skin cancer. But Comby simply says that we “need only wait for the radioactivity to fade away of its own accord”, and even asserts that “one might say that in burning uranium we accelerate…its natural disappearance from the environment.” Such an outrageous statement gives pronuclear “environmentalists” a bad name!
WAY BEHIND THE TIMES
After speculating across 2 billion years to “prove” there is no threat from nuclear waste, Comby says “Elaborate simulations at Yucca Mountain…have confirmed these conclusions, with a large safety factor.” Actually simulations at Yucca Mountain led to it being abandoned as a nuclear waste site after $10 billion taxpayer money was expended and full cost estimates rose from $58 to $96 billion. Yucca has been in the works for over three decades, but being an earthquake-prone and oxidizing environment that could corrode waste containers, it failed to meet IAEA siting criteria. “Environmentalist” Comby doesn’t seem to know or care to know about such details.
Recent freedom-of-information releases indicate it would take two Yuccas to handle the 63,000 tonnes of nuclear wastes already accumulated in the US, the 42,000 tonnes expected from existing plants and the 21,000 tonnes of waste projected from new plants. Most startling, the Bush administration made 11th hour deals to take nuclear wastes off the hands of companies building new plants, even though no waste disposal system is in place. Fact and fantasy are apparently interchangeable for nuclear zealots. But even the Canadian industry-run Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) won’t claim, as has Comby, that research “has demonstrated the feasibility and the safety of long-term geological storage of nuclear waste”. Demonstration in scientific terms means actually doing something. British Petroleum (BP) didn’t demonstrate they could safety do off-shore drilling simply by claiming in 2009 that they could. And look where things are now.
Basically Comby supports the French nuclear industry, with which he has connections, storing waste temporarily at La Hague “awaiting reprocessing”. Though he says this is “not as safe as long-term disposal in a deep repository”, he rejects the plans of the US, Sweden and Finland for “direct disposal” without reprocessing to recover plutonium. I prefer to accept the judgment of the US Academy of Science and Union of Concern Scientists who reject reprocessing. Past senior adviser to the US Energy Department, Robert Alvarez, has said, “Reprocessing plants release about 15,000 times more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear power plants…” while noting that 50 years of failing to create a “closed fuel cycle” have created 250 tons of plutonium, “enough for some 30,000 nuclear weapons”.
When Comby calls for the public to “be informed” he clearly means accepting his astonishing claims, even if they are untrue. I have a different meaning of informed consent and “environmentalist.” With no solution to nuclear waste in practice, anywhere, I say let’s stop producing more of it and get on with sustainable energy.
Next time I’ll look at a proposal to bury nuclear wastes under Southern Saskatchewan.
Visit Dr. Harding's Blog: http://crowsnestecology.wordpress.com/
By Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan June 4, 2010
It’s important to know “both sides” of the nuclear waste controversy now that Saskatchewan is being targeted as a nuclear dump. Even if you are skeptical of industry claims that a nuclear waste solution “is in the works”, and see this as a ploy to get more nuclear power plants approved, there’s lots to learn about the nuclear worldview.
Bruno Comby of the French-based “Environmentalist for Nuclear Energy” argues that “nuclear waste has undeniable environmental benefits”. Comby lists three benefits: its “small amount”, it not being “disposed of in the biosphere” and it being “almost totally confined.” He claims that “reprocessed radioactive waste” can be decreased “to the natural level of radioactivity of the original ore after only 5,000 years”, and that “safe, simply and efficient solutions exist to make nuclear waste inert” and to isolate it “from the biosphere until it is no longer toxic”. Finally he claims that a naturally-occurring nuclear reaction 2 billion years ago at Okla, Gabon shows that “waste, after being left unconfined…has not migrated more than three meters.” He concludes the nuclear waste issue is “technically and ecologically solved by a combination of reprocessing technology, vitrification and deep geological disposal.”
This is quite a mouthful. If it’s this “pat” then why, nearly 70 years after the first atom was split, are governments struggling with what to do with nuclear wastes? Comby’s argument is constructed to make real problems disappear. Notice his phrase “after only 5,000 years”, as though it would be acceptable to continue to create high-level wastes threatening environmental health for 50 generations. (It’s actually many more generations when you consider that plutonium has a half-life of 26,000 years.) He claims that because it takes a smaller quantity of uranium than oil to produce the same amount of energy, nuclear wastes are less problematic. But he completely ignores the build-up of long-lived radioactive uranium tailings, which are part of the nuclear waste stream; there are already more than 200 million tons of such tailings in Canada. Comby trivializes the toxicity of spent fuel, claiming that once plutonium is “reprocessed and recycled” as fuel for new reactors the remaining waste “is totally isolated from the environment”. Furthermore, Comby completely ignores the increased dangers of proliferation from plutonium becoming more available.
MORE DISINFORMATION
Comby states that over time nuclear wastes “…are only weakly radioactive. And these…are alpha-ray emitters from which we can easily protect ourselves.” Actually alpha radiation is highly mobile and much more dangerous than previously thought, and is highly carcinogenic if breathed and imbedded in our lungs. Radon gas, which after smoking is the greatest cause of lung cancer worldwide, is an alpha-emitter. But Comby tries to minimize the dangers from nuclear waste build-up by focusing on the dangers of other energy systems. He quotes pronuclear “gaia” theorist James Lovelock that “there is at present no other safe, practical and economic substitute for … burning carbon fuels.” Lovelock said this in 2003, when the global shift to renewables was already underway. By 2005 electricity from renewables surpassed that from nuclear power worldwide, and the gap keeps growing.
Comby tries to turn the table on non-nuclear environmentalists saying, “Since the energy resources of our planet are limited, it would be a great shame and highly unecological, not to recover such large amounts of energy-rich materials”, by which he means plutonium. He continues, “Reprocessing…as practiced at the La Hague plant in France (and) at Sellafield in UK…is ecologically sound.” Comby wrote this in the Journal of Environmental Studies in 2005 without careful research. As I’ve shown in a past column, the Sellafield reprocessing plant has been a financial and technical calamity, and is to be closed down.
Comby admits “the Earth was much more radioactive…when life first appeared”, but then makes the silly claim that “natural radiation has not stood in the way of evolution and development.” Going against mainstream science he claims “The weak doses of natural radioactivity, to which we have been exposed since the dawn of time, are not dangerous.” Mainstream science now admits there is no safe level of radiation; the smallest doses increase risks. And a global industrial experiment has already disproven Comby’s naïve view, for with the thinning of the ozone layer protecting us from UV rays we have seen a steep rise in skin cancer. But Comby simply says that we “need only wait for the radioactivity to fade away of its own accord”, and even asserts that “one might say that in burning uranium we accelerate…its natural disappearance from the environment.” Such an outrageous statement gives pronuclear “environmentalists” a bad name!
WAY BEHIND THE TIMES
After speculating across 2 billion years to “prove” there is no threat from nuclear waste, Comby says “Elaborate simulations at Yucca Mountain…have confirmed these conclusions, with a large safety factor.” Actually simulations at Yucca Mountain led to it being abandoned as a nuclear waste site after $10 billion taxpayer money was expended and full cost estimates rose from $58 to $96 billion. Yucca has been in the works for over three decades, but being an earthquake-prone and oxidizing environment that could corrode waste containers, it failed to meet IAEA siting criteria. “Environmentalist” Comby doesn’t seem to know or care to know about such details.
Recent freedom-of-information releases indicate it would take two Yuccas to handle the 63,000 tonnes of nuclear wastes already accumulated in the US, the 42,000 tonnes expected from existing plants and the 21,000 tonnes of waste projected from new plants. Most startling, the Bush administration made 11th hour deals to take nuclear wastes off the hands of companies building new plants, even though no waste disposal system is in place. Fact and fantasy are apparently interchangeable for nuclear zealots. But even the Canadian industry-run Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) won’t claim, as has Comby, that research “has demonstrated the feasibility and the safety of long-term geological storage of nuclear waste”. Demonstration in scientific terms means actually doing something. British Petroleum (BP) didn’t demonstrate they could safety do off-shore drilling simply by claiming in 2009 that they could. And look where things are now.
Basically Comby supports the French nuclear industry, with which he has connections, storing waste temporarily at La Hague “awaiting reprocessing”. Though he says this is “not as safe as long-term disposal in a deep repository”, he rejects the plans of the US, Sweden and Finland for “direct disposal” without reprocessing to recover plutonium. I prefer to accept the judgment of the US Academy of Science and Union of Concern Scientists who reject reprocessing. Past senior adviser to the US Energy Department, Robert Alvarez, has said, “Reprocessing plants release about 15,000 times more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear power plants…” while noting that 50 years of failing to create a “closed fuel cycle” have created 250 tons of plutonium, “enough for some 30,000 nuclear weapons”.
When Comby calls for the public to “be informed” he clearly means accepting his astonishing claims, even if they are untrue. I have a different meaning of informed consent and “environmentalist.” With no solution to nuclear waste in practice, anywhere, I say let’s stop producing more of it and get on with sustainable energy.
Next time I’ll look at a proposal to bury nuclear wastes under Southern Saskatchewan.
Visit Dr. Harding's Blog: http://crowsnestecology.wordpress.com/
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
UNITED CHURCH CALLS FOR BAN ON NUCLEAR WASTES
by Oscar » Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:12 pm
UNITED CHURCH CALLS FOR BAN ON NUCLEAR WASTES
BY Jim Harding
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan June 11, 2010
The United Church, Saskatchewan’s largest religious organization, has entered the debate on nuclear wastes. Its annual conference May 28th in Moose Jaw passed a resolution “prohibiting the transport or storage of high level nuclear waste across Saskatchewan”. This comes when the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is looking for a “willing community” to take nuclear wastes; which seems orchestrated, as last year the government-appointed Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) recommended the same thing. In spite of overwhelming opposition in public consultations, the government has given this the green light. The corporate lobby is substantial; one UDP member, Saskatoon-based uranium giant Cameco which co-owns Ontario’s Bruce Power nuclear power consortium, has long advocated Saskatchewan becoming a nuclear dump.
The United Church policy notes that nuclear reactor waste contains over 200 chemicals “which are radioactive for thousands of years”. It calls for a permanent ban to protect water from “long term toxic poisons of radium, thorium and plutonium”, noting that “we already have a dangerous store of radium” in uranium mine tailings across the North. It notes that geological research has found “salt water under extreme temperature underlying the rock of the Pre-Cambrian Shield”, and that The US “has cancelled the Yucca Repository because of underground water movement, geological fault systems” and widespread public opposition.
A public debate over a nuclear waste ban is long overdue. Long before the NWMO targeted Saskatchewan, the AECL included Saskatchewan as a potential sites for a nuclear dump, even though no such wastes were produced here. Even after the eight-year federal Panel reported in 1998 that Canadians didn’t support geological disposal, the federal Liberals gave the industry which produces the wastes a mandate to implement this “plan”. A Manitoba and Quebec ban on nuclear wastes has concentrated industry pressure on Saskatchewan.
The “public acceptance” strategy hoped for approval for Bruce Power’s nuclear plants on the North Saskatchewan River, since once we produced our own wastes we couldn’t complain about our “civic duty” to take them from elsewhere. This has failed. With the government seemingly working with industry on another tack, there isn’t a lot of time for the public to become better informed. While the Sask Party government doesn’t want this to become an election issue, and the Lingenfelter-led NDP won’t risk exposing its uranium policies to more scrutiny, the outpouring of opposition during the UDP consultations shows the grass-roots cares deeply about this issue.
THE RURAL SOUTH COULD BE TARGETED
This is not only a concern for northerners who already have a legacy of uranium mine tailings. A serious proposal to bury nuclear wastes under the Williston Basin in southern Saskatchewan was published in the 2006 Saskatchewan Geological Survey. Geological consultant Brian Brunskill argues that “the thickness of the overlying strata … would provide suitable confinement from the biosphere for a period longer than the radioactive material is likely to be hazardous.” His proposal has continental ramifications, for “the deepest part of the Saskatchewan portion of the basin, south of Estevan near the Canada-USA border…is about 3.5 km thick”. I’m sure this has been noted by US nuclear authorities who are back to square one after cancelling their Yucca project.
How does this proposal stand up to common sense and multidisciplinary science? In 2005 the NWMO estimated there will be 3.6 million bundles of nuclear wastes if all current reactors complete their expected life cycle. A phase-out of nuclear power however could greatly reduce this radioactive legacy. But Brunskill doesn’t consider how a non-nuclear energy policy would reduce the production of wastes that he admits will be “hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years”. Seemingly value-free and passive in the service of the powerful, he simply asserts that “current drilling technologies are quite capable” of creating an underground nuclear waste dump. In view of what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s ironic that he mentioned “BP’s directionally drilled oil wells at the Wytch Farm Oil Field in Dorset, UK” as one proof. The Gulf disaster shows the uncertainties with deep-sea drilling; drilling far down into the Precambrian Shield will carry its own surprises. It is one thing to drill to bring oil up to the earth’s surface, but quite another to try to keep radioactive wastes placed underground from coming back to the surface. Brunskill saying, “it is likely that the stagnant or downward-flow potential of the brines would ensure that contamination due to container failure would remain in the very deep geosphere” sounds a bit like a geological crap shoot.
“THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED…”
The road to hell on earth is indeed paved with good intentions…and self-delusion. There is something innocently naïve about a proposal that doesn’t consider the problems transporting 3.6 million nuclear waste bundles to southern Saskatchewan. Imagine the trains and trucks with heavily armed security going through our communities, day in and day out for decades. And remember that Manitoba, standing between us and Ontario’s nuclear plants, has banned high-level wastes.
Brunskill ignores how drilling would compromise the “natural containment” of the waste. He concludes that placing 3.6 million bundles end-to-end would require about 2,000 km. He then estimates the cost of this much drilling 3000 meters under southern Saskatchewan, and calculates “If each horizontal repository section were 5000 meters long then, about 400 repositories would be required”. Think of the scale and probability of failure. Though he admits some technical challenges, he thinks the casing to hold the spent fuel rods could simply be “cemented in place”. Such ecological naiveté reminds me of when the French company Amok proposed that thorium and radium at Cluff Lake be isolated from the environment by being placed in cement caskets. These were cracking and leaking within a decade. (The half-life of thorium which steadily decays into radium and radon gas is 76,000 years.) Writing as if geological containment is akin to laying tiles in a house meant to last a few generations, he continues, “…there is an opportunity to inject grouting compound into any fractures that may transect the hole…”
Seemingly unaware of the proliferation risks from separating plutonium from spent fuel bundles, Brunskill simply lists as an advantage of his proposal that in the future “the containers could be transferred to a new repository”; continuing that “the stored nuclear fuel would also be in an abandoned position if future decision-makers decide to permanently abandon the material”. Rather than acknowledging the urgent issue of nuclear proliferation, Brunskill defers to “decision-makers”, who for seven decades have themselves deferred the matter.
There is some irony that this argument for burying nuclear wastes in southern Saskatchewan undercuts the NWMO’s proposal. Brunskill questions the heavy reliance of the NWMO on “engineered barriers …to retard the rate of contamination into the host rock resulting from any material failure.” He says that “It can be assumed that virtually all engineered barriers will eventually fail”; what environmentalists have been saying for decades. He is very clear that, “Given the large volume of bundles to store, the potential for premature failure of engineered barriers…is significant”. In his proposal “Natural systems are emphasized as they ensure permanent isolation and containment…” While he’s critiqued the NWMO concept, he’s held on to the same naïve absolutism.
The United Church is to be congratulated for calling for a nuclear waste ban. What other groups will now follow their lead?
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns are available at:
http://crowsnestecology.wordpress.com/
======================
Posted: Fri May 14, 2010 2:31 am Post subject: OVERCOMING INTERNATIONAL HYPOCRISY ON NON-PROLIFERATION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OVERCOMING INTERNATIONAL HYPOCRISY ON NON-PROLIFERATION
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan May 7, 2010
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon reminds us that “a world free of nuclear weapons would be a global public good of the highest order.” Getting there is the challenge. One prerequisite is accurate and balanced understanding of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which comes under its mandatory 5-year review this May. These are vital negotiations for the 200 countries involved; forty years after the treaty humanity faces a dangerous tipping point regarding nuclear proliferation.
The NPT is mostly known for its intent to “prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology.” But it has two other objectives. Rarely reported is its objective “to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.” And, most problematic and standing in the way of the other objectives yet rarely scrutinized, is its commitment to “promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
DOUBLE STANDARDS
The NPT Preamble highlights “the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war…” The intention of all parties to the treaty is “to achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to undertake effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament.” This was agreed to in 1970, yet throughout this period the media largely ignored the continuing failure of the big nuclear weapons states – US, Russia, France, Britain and China – to move asap “in the direction of nuclear disarmament”. Rather, most critical reporting has been about big power jockeying over small countries, like Iran, in their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Before today’s focus on Iran, the “free press” helped perpetuate the myth that Iraq had nuclear weapons, which then became justification for the invasion by the US and UK. The media never mentioned that the NPT Preamble reiterates the principle of non-aggression from the UN Charter, saying “States must refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and independence of any State.” Nor has there been any ongoing mainstream reporting that the US and UK used radiological, depleted uranium (DU) weapons in the war on Iraq, in breach of the NPT.
This big-power bias perpetuates disinformation. If I asked which countries had signed the NPT, "Iran or Israel? North Korea or India?”, I bet most Canadians would say “Israel and India”. And they’d be wrong. But, in view of the way proliferation is used and reported as a geo-political football, their mistake would be understandable.
There are both rights and obligations under the NPT and North Korea has clearly “lapsed” on the latter. Under Article IV, Iran has the “inalienable right…to develop, research, production (sic) and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”. However under Article III it has the responsibility to prevent the “diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or others explosive devices.” With its uranium enrichment program Iran must be held to the latter. But why such an exclusive focus on Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, when Israel has already developed nuclear weapons while completely ignoring the NPT? Or why isn’t there some soul-searching about why Canada, an early signatory to the NPT, supplied “weapons technology” to India, who still refuses to sign the NPT? Or what about the US and UK diverting depleted uranium from so-called “peaceful” nuclear power for “nuclear weapons or other explosive devices”?
OVERCOMING NUCLEAR STALEMATE
Such international hypocrisy makes it hard to progress towards nuclear disarmament. To overcome the double standard we’ll have to understand how proliferation looks to smaller powers. Obama’s recent Nuclear Security Summit got widespread coverage in the western media; yet how many Canadians know about the Conference on nuclear disarmament held in Tehran this past April 17-18? While it was dismissed by the EU and the US, it had low-level delegates from China and Russia. Uganda, Turkey and Lebanon, all non-permanent UN Security Council members, also attended. As the Foreign Editor wrote for the April 19th The Independent, this conference took place “with some support from developing countries tired of the double standard, they claim (with some justification) that the West maintains.” The conference ended with the call for “complete overhaul of the 40 year old NPT and for Israel’s nuclear weapons to be brought under a UN inspection regime.”
The US was sometimes referred to as the “only atomic criminal”, which is clearly propaganda that may be part of Iran’s strategy to avoid further NPT sanctions. But it’s also true that the only country that has ever used an atomic bomb on another country is the US. We can’t expect to see serious progress towards non-proliferation and disarmament while western countries, including Canada, deny their complicity in the nuclear threat. Of course we don’t want Iran to join Israel as a nuclear weapons power and to see an arms race in the Middle East. But the way to prevent this is not by demonizing or threatening Iran, as was deceptively done with Iraq, while ignoring Israel’s role in proliferation.
Further, while the US targeted Iran it negotiated a unilateral agreement to share nuclear technology with non-NPT member India. And Canada is trying to cash-in on this with nuclear and uranium sales. In its 2009 report, “Eliminating Nuclear Threats” the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation says “the Indian agreement will make it considerably more difficult to extract stronger terms than those won by India.” This US-India Agreement will make it harder to bring countries outside, or in non-compliance with, the NPT into binding non-nuclear weapons agreements, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. So how can the US ride its high-horse regarding non-proliferation?
Each special interest claims it needs nuclear weapons as deterrents; however we know that all of humanity is threatened by continued proliferation. So while Israel may try to justify its covert nuclear weapons program as a defensive act against those who want Israel destroyed, we can see how other Middle Eastern countries, who have already lost military conflicts with the regional military-superpower, Israel, might also want nuclear weapons as a deterrent. This became even truer after Israel unilaterally bombed the French-made Osirak reactor near Bagdad in 1981, and especially after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A similarly explosive dynamic exists between India and Pakistan, already nuclear weapons states refusing to sign the NPT, facing serious border disputes. But to begin to resolve such regional nuclear disputes we have to go further. The International Commission notes that Israel, India and Pakistan “… will not eliminate their nuclear deterrents unless and until China, the US and others have done so…”
If we want to see real progress towards non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, so that our children can work for a sustainable society with some basic international peace and security, we need to challenge the hypocrisy that plagues these negotiations. A good place to start is right here in Saskatchewan.
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns are available at:
http://crowsnestecology.wordpress.com/
BY Jim Harding
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan June 11, 2010
The United Church, Saskatchewan’s largest religious organization, has entered the debate on nuclear wastes. Its annual conference May 28th in Moose Jaw passed a resolution “prohibiting the transport or storage of high level nuclear waste across Saskatchewan”. This comes when the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is looking for a “willing community” to take nuclear wastes; which seems orchestrated, as last year the government-appointed Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) recommended the same thing. In spite of overwhelming opposition in public consultations, the government has given this the green light. The corporate lobby is substantial; one UDP member, Saskatoon-based uranium giant Cameco which co-owns Ontario’s Bruce Power nuclear power consortium, has long advocated Saskatchewan becoming a nuclear dump.
The United Church policy notes that nuclear reactor waste contains over 200 chemicals “which are radioactive for thousands of years”. It calls for a permanent ban to protect water from “long term toxic poisons of radium, thorium and plutonium”, noting that “we already have a dangerous store of radium” in uranium mine tailings across the North. It notes that geological research has found “salt water under extreme temperature underlying the rock of the Pre-Cambrian Shield”, and that The US “has cancelled the Yucca Repository because of underground water movement, geological fault systems” and widespread public opposition.
A public debate over a nuclear waste ban is long overdue. Long before the NWMO targeted Saskatchewan, the AECL included Saskatchewan as a potential sites for a nuclear dump, even though no such wastes were produced here. Even after the eight-year federal Panel reported in 1998 that Canadians didn’t support geological disposal, the federal Liberals gave the industry which produces the wastes a mandate to implement this “plan”. A Manitoba and Quebec ban on nuclear wastes has concentrated industry pressure on Saskatchewan.
The “public acceptance” strategy hoped for approval for Bruce Power’s nuclear plants on the North Saskatchewan River, since once we produced our own wastes we couldn’t complain about our “civic duty” to take them from elsewhere. This has failed. With the government seemingly working with industry on another tack, there isn’t a lot of time for the public to become better informed. While the Sask Party government doesn’t want this to become an election issue, and the Lingenfelter-led NDP won’t risk exposing its uranium policies to more scrutiny, the outpouring of opposition during the UDP consultations shows the grass-roots cares deeply about this issue.
THE RURAL SOUTH COULD BE TARGETED
This is not only a concern for northerners who already have a legacy of uranium mine tailings. A serious proposal to bury nuclear wastes under the Williston Basin in southern Saskatchewan was published in the 2006 Saskatchewan Geological Survey. Geological consultant Brian Brunskill argues that “the thickness of the overlying strata … would provide suitable confinement from the biosphere for a period longer than the radioactive material is likely to be hazardous.” His proposal has continental ramifications, for “the deepest part of the Saskatchewan portion of the basin, south of Estevan near the Canada-USA border…is about 3.5 km thick”. I’m sure this has been noted by US nuclear authorities who are back to square one after cancelling their Yucca project.
How does this proposal stand up to common sense and multidisciplinary science? In 2005 the NWMO estimated there will be 3.6 million bundles of nuclear wastes if all current reactors complete their expected life cycle. A phase-out of nuclear power however could greatly reduce this radioactive legacy. But Brunskill doesn’t consider how a non-nuclear energy policy would reduce the production of wastes that he admits will be “hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years”. Seemingly value-free and passive in the service of the powerful, he simply asserts that “current drilling technologies are quite capable” of creating an underground nuclear waste dump. In view of what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s ironic that he mentioned “BP’s directionally drilled oil wells at the Wytch Farm Oil Field in Dorset, UK” as one proof. The Gulf disaster shows the uncertainties with deep-sea drilling; drilling far down into the Precambrian Shield will carry its own surprises. It is one thing to drill to bring oil up to the earth’s surface, but quite another to try to keep radioactive wastes placed underground from coming back to the surface. Brunskill saying, “it is likely that the stagnant or downward-flow potential of the brines would ensure that contamination due to container failure would remain in the very deep geosphere” sounds a bit like a geological crap shoot.
“THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED…”
The road to hell on earth is indeed paved with good intentions…and self-delusion. There is something innocently naïve about a proposal that doesn’t consider the problems transporting 3.6 million nuclear waste bundles to southern Saskatchewan. Imagine the trains and trucks with heavily armed security going through our communities, day in and day out for decades. And remember that Manitoba, standing between us and Ontario’s nuclear plants, has banned high-level wastes.
Brunskill ignores how drilling would compromise the “natural containment” of the waste. He concludes that placing 3.6 million bundles end-to-end would require about 2,000 km. He then estimates the cost of this much drilling 3000 meters under southern Saskatchewan, and calculates “If each horizontal repository section were 5000 meters long then, about 400 repositories would be required”. Think of the scale and probability of failure. Though he admits some technical challenges, he thinks the casing to hold the spent fuel rods could simply be “cemented in place”. Such ecological naiveté reminds me of when the French company Amok proposed that thorium and radium at Cluff Lake be isolated from the environment by being placed in cement caskets. These were cracking and leaking within a decade. (The half-life of thorium which steadily decays into radium and radon gas is 76,000 years.) Writing as if geological containment is akin to laying tiles in a house meant to last a few generations, he continues, “…there is an opportunity to inject grouting compound into any fractures that may transect the hole…”
Seemingly unaware of the proliferation risks from separating plutonium from spent fuel bundles, Brunskill simply lists as an advantage of his proposal that in the future “the containers could be transferred to a new repository”; continuing that “the stored nuclear fuel would also be in an abandoned position if future decision-makers decide to permanently abandon the material”. Rather than acknowledging the urgent issue of nuclear proliferation, Brunskill defers to “decision-makers”, who for seven decades have themselves deferred the matter.
There is some irony that this argument for burying nuclear wastes in southern Saskatchewan undercuts the NWMO’s proposal. Brunskill questions the heavy reliance of the NWMO on “engineered barriers …to retard the rate of contamination into the host rock resulting from any material failure.” He says that “It can be assumed that virtually all engineered barriers will eventually fail”; what environmentalists have been saying for decades. He is very clear that, “Given the large volume of bundles to store, the potential for premature failure of engineered barriers…is significant”. In his proposal “Natural systems are emphasized as they ensure permanent isolation and containment…” While he’s critiqued the NWMO concept, he’s held on to the same naïve absolutism.
The United Church is to be congratulated for calling for a nuclear waste ban. What other groups will now follow their lead?
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns are available at:
http://crowsnestecology.wordpress.com/
======================
Posted: Fri May 14, 2010 2:31 am Post subject: OVERCOMING INTERNATIONAL HYPOCRISY ON NON-PROLIFERATION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OVERCOMING INTERNATIONAL HYPOCRISY ON NON-PROLIFERATION
BY Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan May 7, 2010
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon reminds us that “a world free of nuclear weapons would be a global public good of the highest order.” Getting there is the challenge. One prerequisite is accurate and balanced understanding of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which comes under its mandatory 5-year review this May. These are vital negotiations for the 200 countries involved; forty years after the treaty humanity faces a dangerous tipping point regarding nuclear proliferation.
The NPT is mostly known for its intent to “prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology.” But it has two other objectives. Rarely reported is its objective “to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.” And, most problematic and standing in the way of the other objectives yet rarely scrutinized, is its commitment to “promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
DOUBLE STANDARDS
The NPT Preamble highlights “the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war…” The intention of all parties to the treaty is “to achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to undertake effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament.” This was agreed to in 1970, yet throughout this period the media largely ignored the continuing failure of the big nuclear weapons states – US, Russia, France, Britain and China – to move asap “in the direction of nuclear disarmament”. Rather, most critical reporting has been about big power jockeying over small countries, like Iran, in their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Before today’s focus on Iran, the “free press” helped perpetuate the myth that Iraq had nuclear weapons, which then became justification for the invasion by the US and UK. The media never mentioned that the NPT Preamble reiterates the principle of non-aggression from the UN Charter, saying “States must refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and independence of any State.” Nor has there been any ongoing mainstream reporting that the US and UK used radiological, depleted uranium (DU) weapons in the war on Iraq, in breach of the NPT.
This big-power bias perpetuates disinformation. If I asked which countries had signed the NPT, "Iran or Israel? North Korea or India?”, I bet most Canadians would say “Israel and India”. And they’d be wrong. But, in view of the way proliferation is used and reported as a geo-political football, their mistake would be understandable.
There are both rights and obligations under the NPT and North Korea has clearly “lapsed” on the latter. Under Article IV, Iran has the “inalienable right…to develop, research, production (sic) and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”. However under Article III it has the responsibility to prevent the “diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or others explosive devices.” With its uranium enrichment program Iran must be held to the latter. But why such an exclusive focus on Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, when Israel has already developed nuclear weapons while completely ignoring the NPT? Or why isn’t there some soul-searching about why Canada, an early signatory to the NPT, supplied “weapons technology” to India, who still refuses to sign the NPT? Or what about the US and UK diverting depleted uranium from so-called “peaceful” nuclear power for “nuclear weapons or other explosive devices”?
OVERCOMING NUCLEAR STALEMATE
Such international hypocrisy makes it hard to progress towards nuclear disarmament. To overcome the double standard we’ll have to understand how proliferation looks to smaller powers. Obama’s recent Nuclear Security Summit got widespread coverage in the western media; yet how many Canadians know about the Conference on nuclear disarmament held in Tehran this past April 17-18? While it was dismissed by the EU and the US, it had low-level delegates from China and Russia. Uganda, Turkey and Lebanon, all non-permanent UN Security Council members, also attended. As the Foreign Editor wrote for the April 19th The Independent, this conference took place “with some support from developing countries tired of the double standard, they claim (with some justification) that the West maintains.” The conference ended with the call for “complete overhaul of the 40 year old NPT and for Israel’s nuclear weapons to be brought under a UN inspection regime.”
The US was sometimes referred to as the “only atomic criminal”, which is clearly propaganda that may be part of Iran’s strategy to avoid further NPT sanctions. But it’s also true that the only country that has ever used an atomic bomb on another country is the US. We can’t expect to see serious progress towards non-proliferation and disarmament while western countries, including Canada, deny their complicity in the nuclear threat. Of course we don’t want Iran to join Israel as a nuclear weapons power and to see an arms race in the Middle East. But the way to prevent this is not by demonizing or threatening Iran, as was deceptively done with Iraq, while ignoring Israel’s role in proliferation.
Further, while the US targeted Iran it negotiated a unilateral agreement to share nuclear technology with non-NPT member India. And Canada is trying to cash-in on this with nuclear and uranium sales. In its 2009 report, “Eliminating Nuclear Threats” the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation says “the Indian agreement will make it considerably more difficult to extract stronger terms than those won by India.” This US-India Agreement will make it harder to bring countries outside, or in non-compliance with, the NPT into binding non-nuclear weapons agreements, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. So how can the US ride its high-horse regarding non-proliferation?
Each special interest claims it needs nuclear weapons as deterrents; however we know that all of humanity is threatened by continued proliferation. So while Israel may try to justify its covert nuclear weapons program as a defensive act against those who want Israel destroyed, we can see how other Middle Eastern countries, who have already lost military conflicts with the regional military-superpower, Israel, might also want nuclear weapons as a deterrent. This became even truer after Israel unilaterally bombed the French-made Osirak reactor near Bagdad in 1981, and especially after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A similarly explosive dynamic exists between India and Pakistan, already nuclear weapons states refusing to sign the NPT, facing serious border disputes. But to begin to resolve such regional nuclear disputes we have to go further. The International Commission notes that Israel, India and Pakistan “… will not eliminate their nuclear deterrents unless and until China, the US and others have done so…”
If we want to see real progress towards non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, so that our children can work for a sustainable society with some basic international peace and security, we need to challenge the hypocrisy that plagues these negotiations. A good place to start is right here in Saskatchewan.
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
Past columns are available at:
http://crowsnestecology.wordpress.com/
- Oscar
- Site Admin
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CAN WE TRUST THE NUCLEAR REGULATORS?
by Oscar » Thu Jun 24, 2010 10:21 am
CAN WE TRUST THE NUCLEAR REGULATORS?
BY Jim Harding
Published in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan June 18, 2010
The nuclear industry has long tried to justify its expansion by promising that a solution to nuclear wastes is in the works. The panacea, we are now told, will be geological disposal. But the public has become more skeptical of a “permanent” solution on a planet that recycles elements in perpetuity. And now that Nevada’s Yucca waste repository has been cancelled, after being mired in bad science and mismanagement, geological storage has again become “wishful thinking”. Nuclear blind faith is hard to alter, however, for the Bush administration promised financial backing for 21 new reactors even though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) hadn’t committed to any date for a nuclear repository. The U.S. public will pay dearly for the continuing lack of foresight.
DEMOCRATIZING WASTE STORAGE
The contradictions are too much for communities living near nuclear plants. One U.S. group that bought into the false nuclear promise about geological disposal is suing the Federal government for not taking high-level wastes to Yucca. Others, more knowledgeable about the inherent limits of nuclear technology, are calling for safer storage of wastes at nuclear power plants. The Citizens Awareness Project is highlighting “the threats posed by the current vulnerable storage of commercial spent fuel”, and in March, 170 groups in 50 states released their “Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Wastes at Reactors.” It calls for lower-density storage of the extremely hot and highly radioactive spent fuel rods. It also wants hardened on-site storage (HOSS) to be able to withstand attacks, and prohibition of any reprocessing of wastes.
Originally the cooling pools were only to be used temporarily. But they have now accumulated wastes well beyond their design capacity with their concentration sometimes approaching that within the reactor core. Any loss of coolant water from an accident or attack would risk a radiological fire with huge releases of radioactivity to the region.
The Network wants funds for state and community monitoring of these wastes. The nuclear industry began under the cloak of military secrecy and now operates commercially under the cloak of the not-so-transparent regulatory system. At a time when the public is seeing what de-regulation has done in the financial and oil-drilling sectors, the nuclear industry wants reduced environmental oversight so it can fast-track and cost-cut new plants. Meanwhile community networks are forming because the industry hasn’t dealt with the “trash” it has already created.
Kevin Kemps from Beyond Nuclear Radioactive Waste says it all: “…28 years after passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 35 years after the repository search began, 53 years into commercial nuclear power, and 68 years after Fermi first split the atom during the Manhattan Project, the U.S. still has no safe, sound, permanent storage plan for high-level nuclear wastes.”
Can we have more confidence in how the nuclear industry is regulated here? It is 28 years since the U.S. began its search for a geological repository. Our federal government only approved such a course of action 8 years ago in 2002, when it passed the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act which created the industry-run Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). The NWMO now travels across Canada, especially concentrating on Saskatchewan, using economic incentives to find a community willing to take nuclear wastes. It is promoting the concept of geological disposal that the U.S. had pursued for nearly three decades and has now had to abandon at Yucca. Are we really smarter than our American neighbours? Or are we just slower to catch on?
CANADA’S NUCLEAR REGULATOR
In 2000 the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) replaced the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), which was very cozy with the AECL, which produces the Candu reactor. With both reporting to the same federal Minister collusion was systemic. But the CNSC is quickly earning a similar reputation. The Harper government’s firing of Linda Keen in January 2008 as the head of the CNSC because she wanted to shut down the 50-year old Chalk River plant for safety repairs, a plant that ended up being shut down anyway, was the turning point.
The CNSC continues to assert its legitimacy. In an email to a Saskatchewan citizen concerned about NWMO’s plan, CNSC’s new president Michael Binder wrote, “I can assure you that we are fully aware of the issues involved with such a project and that we will take all relevant scientific data into account during the licensing process. Once the NWMO identifies a site and technology, the proposal will be thoroughly reviewed by CNSC staff.” He adds, “The regulatory process for such an activity will be conducted in a transparent manner allowing for public input”. Since he is a public official and should be accountable to the public, this correspondence with a member of the public should be publicly scrutinized.
Binder’s reassurances assume the NWMO plan for geological disposal will go ahead. So it’s not “if” but “how” the plan should proceed. In that sense the CNSC is joined at the hip with the NWMO in a similar way as AECB was to the AECL. The CNSC seems disinterested that the “scientific” personnel attached to the NWMO are primarily from within the industry. If the CNSC was committed to our health and safety and protection of the environment, all “relevant scientific data”, including from the Yucca debacle, should be looked at to determine whether this plan is valid at all. The CNSC wants us to forget that the NWMO is recycling the proposal of the AECL, which the 8-year federal Seaborn panel concluded the Canadian public did not support. The NWMO is a fox in sheep’s clothing.
In response to Binder, the concerned citizen said “I am surprised that you are so confident that the CNSC ‘will ensure health and safety of Canadians and the protection of the environment’ for 70,000 years,” to which CNSC head, Binder responded, “As long as humanity exist (sic) there shall be a Canada and an obligation by the Government of Canada to ensure the health and safety of Canadians.” This is silly talk, which fails to grasp the time-span that nuclear wastes will remain dangerously radioactive. Canada isn’t even 150 years old, and for nearly half of its existence industry and regulators have been inept about addressing the build-up of nuclear wastes. So talking like the CNSC will go on protecting the public for a geological time-span that dwarfs human history is simply absurd. That this statement came from the head of the nuclear regulatory body is not at all reassuring.
Similar bureaucratic and rhetorical assurances were made in the U.S. when the industry was pandering to “Yucca” as the final solution. But that era of pseudo-science and public deception is being challenged by a grass-roots movement wanting to democratize the handling of nuclear wastes. Here, too, we need public involvement in the monitoring and vigilant regulation of waste management at all nuclear plants, most of which are in Ontario. It’s time the CNSC stopped advocating for the industry-run NWMO and took a more serious look at what is actually happening with the wastes that exist.
see new blog at top of http://jimharding.brinkster.net
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
BY Jim Harding
Published in United Newspapers of Saskatchewan June 18, 2010
The nuclear industry has long tried to justify its expansion by promising that a solution to nuclear wastes is in the works. The panacea, we are now told, will be geological disposal. But the public has become more skeptical of a “permanent” solution on a planet that recycles elements in perpetuity. And now that Nevada’s Yucca waste repository has been cancelled, after being mired in bad science and mismanagement, geological storage has again become “wishful thinking”. Nuclear blind faith is hard to alter, however, for the Bush administration promised financial backing for 21 new reactors even though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) hadn’t committed to any date for a nuclear repository. The U.S. public will pay dearly for the continuing lack of foresight.
DEMOCRATIZING WASTE STORAGE
The contradictions are too much for communities living near nuclear plants. One U.S. group that bought into the false nuclear promise about geological disposal is suing the Federal government for not taking high-level wastes to Yucca. Others, more knowledgeable about the inherent limits of nuclear technology, are calling for safer storage of wastes at nuclear power plants. The Citizens Awareness Project is highlighting “the threats posed by the current vulnerable storage of commercial spent fuel”, and in March, 170 groups in 50 states released their “Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Wastes at Reactors.” It calls for lower-density storage of the extremely hot and highly radioactive spent fuel rods. It also wants hardened on-site storage (HOSS) to be able to withstand attacks, and prohibition of any reprocessing of wastes.
Originally the cooling pools were only to be used temporarily. But they have now accumulated wastes well beyond their design capacity with their concentration sometimes approaching that within the reactor core. Any loss of coolant water from an accident or attack would risk a radiological fire with huge releases of radioactivity to the region.
The Network wants funds for state and community monitoring of these wastes. The nuclear industry began under the cloak of military secrecy and now operates commercially under the cloak of the not-so-transparent regulatory system. At a time when the public is seeing what de-regulation has done in the financial and oil-drilling sectors, the nuclear industry wants reduced environmental oversight so it can fast-track and cost-cut new plants. Meanwhile community networks are forming because the industry hasn’t dealt with the “trash” it has already created.
Kevin Kemps from Beyond Nuclear Radioactive Waste says it all: “…28 years after passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 35 years after the repository search began, 53 years into commercial nuclear power, and 68 years after Fermi first split the atom during the Manhattan Project, the U.S. still has no safe, sound, permanent storage plan for high-level nuclear wastes.”
Can we have more confidence in how the nuclear industry is regulated here? It is 28 years since the U.S. began its search for a geological repository. Our federal government only approved such a course of action 8 years ago in 2002, when it passed the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act which created the industry-run Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). The NWMO now travels across Canada, especially concentrating on Saskatchewan, using economic incentives to find a community willing to take nuclear wastes. It is promoting the concept of geological disposal that the U.S. had pursued for nearly three decades and has now had to abandon at Yucca. Are we really smarter than our American neighbours? Or are we just slower to catch on?
CANADA’S NUCLEAR REGULATOR
In 2000 the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) replaced the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), which was very cozy with the AECL, which produces the Candu reactor. With both reporting to the same federal Minister collusion was systemic. But the CNSC is quickly earning a similar reputation. The Harper government’s firing of Linda Keen in January 2008 as the head of the CNSC because she wanted to shut down the 50-year old Chalk River plant for safety repairs, a plant that ended up being shut down anyway, was the turning point.
The CNSC continues to assert its legitimacy. In an email to a Saskatchewan citizen concerned about NWMO’s plan, CNSC’s new president Michael Binder wrote, “I can assure you that we are fully aware of the issues involved with such a project and that we will take all relevant scientific data into account during the licensing process. Once the NWMO identifies a site and technology, the proposal will be thoroughly reviewed by CNSC staff.” He adds, “The regulatory process for such an activity will be conducted in a transparent manner allowing for public input”. Since he is a public official and should be accountable to the public, this correspondence with a member of the public should be publicly scrutinized.
Binder’s reassurances assume the NWMO plan for geological disposal will go ahead. So it’s not “if” but “how” the plan should proceed. In that sense the CNSC is joined at the hip with the NWMO in a similar way as AECB was to the AECL. The CNSC seems disinterested that the “scientific” personnel attached to the NWMO are primarily from within the industry. If the CNSC was committed to our health and safety and protection of the environment, all “relevant scientific data”, including from the Yucca debacle, should be looked at to determine whether this plan is valid at all. The CNSC wants us to forget that the NWMO is recycling the proposal of the AECL, which the 8-year federal Seaborn panel concluded the Canadian public did not support. The NWMO is a fox in sheep’s clothing.
In response to Binder, the concerned citizen said “I am surprised that you are so confident that the CNSC ‘will ensure health and safety of Canadians and the protection of the environment’ for 70,000 years,” to which CNSC head, Binder responded, “As long as humanity exist (sic) there shall be a Canada and an obligation by the Government of Canada to ensure the health and safety of Canadians.” This is silly talk, which fails to grasp the time-span that nuclear wastes will remain dangerously radioactive. Canada isn’t even 150 years old, and for nearly half of its existence industry and regulators have been inept about addressing the build-up of nuclear wastes. So talking like the CNSC will go on protecting the public for a geological time-span that dwarfs human history is simply absurd. That this statement came from the head of the nuclear regulatory body is not at all reassuring.
Similar bureaucratic and rhetorical assurances were made in the U.S. when the industry was pandering to “Yucca” as the final solution. But that era of pseudo-science and public deception is being challenged by a grass-roots movement wanting to democratize the handling of nuclear wastes. Here, too, we need public involvement in the monitoring and vigilant regulation of waste management at all nuclear plants, most of which are in Ontario. It’s time the CNSC stopped advocating for the industry-run NWMO and took a more serious look at what is actually happening with the wastes that exist.
see new blog at top of http://jimharding.brinkster.net
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
- Oscar
- Site Admin
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PROPOSED URANIUM MINE WOULDN’T GET GO-AHEAD IN SOUTH
by Oscar » Sun Aug 15, 2010 11:51 am
PROPOSED URANIUM MINE WOULDN’T GET GO-AHEAD IN SOUTH
BY Jim Harding
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan August 13, 2010
Saskatchewan Sustainability
The uranium mining going on in the north since the 1950s, first to fuel U.S. nuclear weapons and then nuclear power plants, has made northern Saskatchewan one of the world’s largest uranium tailings dumps.
Meanwhile, Cameco is preparing its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to get approval for yet another huge mine, which they call the Millennium Project. This mine would be 150 km from Wollaston Lake, an area already inundated with radioactive tailings from past mines. The 1993 federal-provincial environment review was so concerned about the cumulative impact of these mines that they recommended that Areva’s proposed Midwest mine not go ahead and that its McClean Lake mine be postponed.
- - - - -
***NOTE: See Report of the Joint Federal-Provincial Panel on Uranium Mining Developments in Northern Saskatchewan completed in 1993. Ed.
http://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/Content/D/9/7/
D976DAB0-2041-4C77-A6E8-A75407D0ABDA/domain_e.pdf (1.5 MB)
COMMENT: In the letter submitted by the panel chair, Donald Lee, he writes, in part:
"We further recommend that the Midwest Joint Venture project not be allowed to proceed. The expected benefits from this project are meagre, while the chances for negative health and environmental impacts are great.
For the McClean Lake Project, we have concluded that the socio-economic benefits to northern Saskatchewan could be increased and the health and environmental risks reduced to an acceptable level by a modest delay, primarily to provide time for education, training and research. We recommend, therefore, that this project be delayed for at least five years, and that its approval at that time be subject to the conditions outlined in the report."
The panel's recommendations were largely ignored by both levels of government. It should be noted that these environmental assessment hearings were attended by people from across the province. Two panel members resigned before the process was completed. John Dantouze, the only Aboriginal member of the panel, was provoked by the lack of attention given to the panel's recommendations by the federal and provincial governments and by deficiencies in the Environmental Impact Assessments from the mining companies.
See http://www.sicc.sk.ca/saskindian/a96dec29.htm as well as
general deficiencies in the entire review process.
Important history considering the unprecedented rate of exploration currently underway in the north and, as Jim points out in his article, the environmental de-regulation and corporate self-regulation of this industry.
Stephanie
for the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan
http://www.cleangreensask.ca
cleangreensask@yahoo.ca
- - - - -
The proposed Millennium mine would be half way between Cameco’s operating McArthur River mine, the largest in the world, and the uranium-depleted Key Lake mine north on the Pinehouse road which still operates a processing mill and tailings dump. The proposed new mine site is 500 km north of Saskatoon. If it was close to Saskatoon where Cameco has its head office, or to Regina where the pro-uranium government resides, or to southern cities like Swift Current or Yorkton, it would not receive approval.
Some are calling this huge double standard "environmental racism". However, unless both northerners and southerners organize to oppose this mine, Cameco likely hasn’t much to worry about. Even when an environmental review recommended against a uranium mine going ahead, such as in 1993, the mining lobby got its way. And so the Midwest and McClean Lake mines opened regardless of concerns about cumulative effects. The Saskatchewan Party’s move towards environmental de-regulation and corporate self-regulation will favour fast-tracking this new profitable mining project. And the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is already so compromised by its mishandling of radioactive contamination at Port Hope and Chalk River, Ontario that it can’t be counted on as a neutral and objective regulator. Neither Saskatchewan’s Ministry of the Environment or the CNSC would dare say “no” to Cameco’s new mine, even though it is not, in any sense, about creating a sustainable economy in the north.
FAST-TRACKING URANIUM
The ore body contains 47 million pounds of U308 or “yellowcake” that would be shipped to Cameco’s Blind River refinery and Port Hope conversion plant in Ontario. The 4.5 percent uranium in the ore body makes this a very lucrative, cost-effective find. Uranium is a non-renewable toxic resource and its supplies are steadily dwindling. Cameco is therefore interested in getting this high-grade ore mined as quickly as possible, while the shrinking nuclear power industry is still profitable. This project will also help compensate for Cameco’s failure to get another even higher-grade underground mine at Cigar Lake on-steam on time, due to continual costly flooding.
Cameco wants to start road construction at the Millennium mine in two years and then start sinking the 600-700 meter shafts to extract the ore. Their plan is to transport the ore in giant mining trucks such as used in Alberta's tarsands 57 km to Key Lake for milling and tailings disposal. They estimate they will be mining and transporting up to 200,000 tonnes of ore a year, so the carbon footprint of this proposed project would be mammoth.
Cameco plans to mine out this ore body within 6 or 7 years. Uranium mining is extremely capital-intensive and provides very few jobs per millions invested compared to renewable energy resources. The meagre trickling down of short-term benefits to a few individuals in the north simply can’t provide any long-term foundation for a sustainable economy. Industry rhetoric aside, only a pittance of the value of the uranium comes back to the province as revenue. By the time uranium sales reached $600 million in 2006, provincial royalties were only $40 million. In 2008 Cameco’s CEO earned $4.5 million, a third of the $ 14 million uranium royalties going to the province in 2003, and more than BP's present CEO.
ASSAULT ON NORTH
Cameco says that when it decommissions this mine it will restore the area to its previous, pristine state. This is pure public relations. The mine would be in the Wheeler River area of the Athabasca Plains, an undisturbed area of boreal forest presently used by First Nations and Métis for hunting, trapping and fishing. This mine would be yet another assault on the renewable economy in the north, which must be protected for there to be any long-term plan for sustainability. The warning was given in 1993, when the federal-provincial review said “It is not a question whether or not there will be cumulative environmental impacts, but of their magnitude.” Referring to the area west of Wollaston Lake and south of Hatchet Lake, it said the overall effect of mining operations “…with the possibility of interconnected roads and power lines, would be widespread…the entire area might become unproductive for traditional hunting, fishing and gathering activities.”
If Millennium gets the go ahead the mine workers will be based at Key Lake. The only reason for pushing the road through to the proposed new mine is to extract profitable uranium, and Cameco says it may close the road down and remove power lines to the mine after it closes. But the damage will be done. The massive water required for this mine would be pumped from nearby Slush Lake and the “treated” effluent would then be pumped back into Moon Lake, which is part of the Wheeler River system in the region. This will inevitably contaminate the lakes and river with toxic heavy metals and present yet another risk of radioactive spills such as have already occurred at Key Lake and Wollaston Lake.
The 21 km new road will degrade many streams along the way. Sediment and radioactive ore spillage along the road is inevitable once the extraction project is no longer under public scrutiny. Cost-cutting to enhance the bottom line is commonplace once these mega-projects are full-steam ahead. We’ve already seen the industry cut these kinds of corners at Uranium City, Rabbit Lake, Cluff Lake, Key Lake and other mines.
BLENDING WITH NATURE
Cameco’s decommissioning plan focuses on the appearance, not the toxicity of the land. It says it will contour the waste rock left at the site to fit the terrain and then re-vegetate this. This superficial “blending” with nature ignores the long-term ecological impacts. What about all the added radioactive tailings that will be left at Key Lake after milling the ore? The mined-out Dielmann pit at Key Lake already presents huge problems as a tailings dump. Averaging nearly 5 percent uranium, tailings from the Millennium mine would be highly radioactive. One by-product, thorium, which ultimately breaks down into radium and radon gas, has a half-life of 76,000 years which means its radioactive by-products will be bio-available to migrate into the eco-systems for hundreds of thousands of years. Creating this long-term risk for a few years of profitable mining, with few local benefits, is, in a nutshell, what unsustainable development means.
Sustainability requires a shift in perspective; rather than focusing on the short-term value of Cameco’s stocks on the market, we need developmental indicators in place that require us to protect the planet for future generations. The proposed Millennium mine would be another step in the wrong direction, further degrading the land and undermining the renewable economy.
The million dollar question is: will this be the uranium mine that finally catalyses widespread northern opposition to this industry and the radioactive tailings it leaves behind as it takes its big profits to the bank?
BY Jim Harding
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan August 13, 2010
Saskatchewan Sustainability
The uranium mining going on in the north since the 1950s, first to fuel U.S. nuclear weapons and then nuclear power plants, has made northern Saskatchewan one of the world’s largest uranium tailings dumps.
Meanwhile, Cameco is preparing its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to get approval for yet another huge mine, which they call the Millennium Project. This mine would be 150 km from Wollaston Lake, an area already inundated with radioactive tailings from past mines. The 1993 federal-provincial environment review was so concerned about the cumulative impact of these mines that they recommended that Areva’s proposed Midwest mine not go ahead and that its McClean Lake mine be postponed.
- - - - -
***NOTE: See Report of the Joint Federal-Provincial Panel on Uranium Mining Developments in Northern Saskatchewan completed in 1993. Ed.
http://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/Content/D/9/7/
D976DAB0-2041-4C77-A6E8-A75407D0ABDA/domain_e.pdf (1.5 MB)
COMMENT: In the letter submitted by the panel chair, Donald Lee, he writes, in part:
"We further recommend that the Midwest Joint Venture project not be allowed to proceed. The expected benefits from this project are meagre, while the chances for negative health and environmental impacts are great.
For the McClean Lake Project, we have concluded that the socio-economic benefits to northern Saskatchewan could be increased and the health and environmental risks reduced to an acceptable level by a modest delay, primarily to provide time for education, training and research. We recommend, therefore, that this project be delayed for at least five years, and that its approval at that time be subject to the conditions outlined in the report."
The panel's recommendations were largely ignored by both levels of government. It should be noted that these environmental assessment hearings were attended by people from across the province. Two panel members resigned before the process was completed. John Dantouze, the only Aboriginal member of the panel, was provoked by the lack of attention given to the panel's recommendations by the federal and provincial governments and by deficiencies in the Environmental Impact Assessments from the mining companies.
See http://www.sicc.sk.ca/saskindian/a96dec29.htm as well as
general deficiencies in the entire review process.
Important history considering the unprecedented rate of exploration currently underway in the north and, as Jim points out in his article, the environmental de-regulation and corporate self-regulation of this industry.
Stephanie
for the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan
http://www.cleangreensask.ca
cleangreensask@yahoo.ca
- - - - -
The proposed Millennium mine would be half way between Cameco’s operating McArthur River mine, the largest in the world, and the uranium-depleted Key Lake mine north on the Pinehouse road which still operates a processing mill and tailings dump. The proposed new mine site is 500 km north of Saskatoon. If it was close to Saskatoon where Cameco has its head office, or to Regina where the pro-uranium government resides, or to southern cities like Swift Current or Yorkton, it would not receive approval.
Some are calling this huge double standard "environmental racism". However, unless both northerners and southerners organize to oppose this mine, Cameco likely hasn’t much to worry about. Even when an environmental review recommended against a uranium mine going ahead, such as in 1993, the mining lobby got its way. And so the Midwest and McClean Lake mines opened regardless of concerns about cumulative effects. The Saskatchewan Party’s move towards environmental de-regulation and corporate self-regulation will favour fast-tracking this new profitable mining project. And the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is already so compromised by its mishandling of radioactive contamination at Port Hope and Chalk River, Ontario that it can’t be counted on as a neutral and objective regulator. Neither Saskatchewan’s Ministry of the Environment or the CNSC would dare say “no” to Cameco’s new mine, even though it is not, in any sense, about creating a sustainable economy in the north.
FAST-TRACKING URANIUM
The ore body contains 47 million pounds of U308 or “yellowcake” that would be shipped to Cameco’s Blind River refinery and Port Hope conversion plant in Ontario. The 4.5 percent uranium in the ore body makes this a very lucrative, cost-effective find. Uranium is a non-renewable toxic resource and its supplies are steadily dwindling. Cameco is therefore interested in getting this high-grade ore mined as quickly as possible, while the shrinking nuclear power industry is still profitable. This project will also help compensate for Cameco’s failure to get another even higher-grade underground mine at Cigar Lake on-steam on time, due to continual costly flooding.
Cameco wants to start road construction at the Millennium mine in two years and then start sinking the 600-700 meter shafts to extract the ore. Their plan is to transport the ore in giant mining trucks such as used in Alberta's tarsands 57 km to Key Lake for milling and tailings disposal. They estimate they will be mining and transporting up to 200,000 tonnes of ore a year, so the carbon footprint of this proposed project would be mammoth.
Cameco plans to mine out this ore body within 6 or 7 years. Uranium mining is extremely capital-intensive and provides very few jobs per millions invested compared to renewable energy resources. The meagre trickling down of short-term benefits to a few individuals in the north simply can’t provide any long-term foundation for a sustainable economy. Industry rhetoric aside, only a pittance of the value of the uranium comes back to the province as revenue. By the time uranium sales reached $600 million in 2006, provincial royalties were only $40 million. In 2008 Cameco’s CEO earned $4.5 million, a third of the $ 14 million uranium royalties going to the province in 2003, and more than BP's present CEO.
ASSAULT ON NORTH
Cameco says that when it decommissions this mine it will restore the area to its previous, pristine state. This is pure public relations. The mine would be in the Wheeler River area of the Athabasca Plains, an undisturbed area of boreal forest presently used by First Nations and Métis for hunting, trapping and fishing. This mine would be yet another assault on the renewable economy in the north, which must be protected for there to be any long-term plan for sustainability. The warning was given in 1993, when the federal-provincial review said “It is not a question whether or not there will be cumulative environmental impacts, but of their magnitude.” Referring to the area west of Wollaston Lake and south of Hatchet Lake, it said the overall effect of mining operations “…with the possibility of interconnected roads and power lines, would be widespread…the entire area might become unproductive for traditional hunting, fishing and gathering activities.”
If Millennium gets the go ahead the mine workers will be based at Key Lake. The only reason for pushing the road through to the proposed new mine is to extract profitable uranium, and Cameco says it may close the road down and remove power lines to the mine after it closes. But the damage will be done. The massive water required for this mine would be pumped from nearby Slush Lake and the “treated” effluent would then be pumped back into Moon Lake, which is part of the Wheeler River system in the region. This will inevitably contaminate the lakes and river with toxic heavy metals and present yet another risk of radioactive spills such as have already occurred at Key Lake and Wollaston Lake.
The 21 km new road will degrade many streams along the way. Sediment and radioactive ore spillage along the road is inevitable once the extraction project is no longer under public scrutiny. Cost-cutting to enhance the bottom line is commonplace once these mega-projects are full-steam ahead. We’ve already seen the industry cut these kinds of corners at Uranium City, Rabbit Lake, Cluff Lake, Key Lake and other mines.
BLENDING WITH NATURE
Cameco’s decommissioning plan focuses on the appearance, not the toxicity of the land. It says it will contour the waste rock left at the site to fit the terrain and then re-vegetate this. This superficial “blending” with nature ignores the long-term ecological impacts. What about all the added radioactive tailings that will be left at Key Lake after milling the ore? The mined-out Dielmann pit at Key Lake already presents huge problems as a tailings dump. Averaging nearly 5 percent uranium, tailings from the Millennium mine would be highly radioactive. One by-product, thorium, which ultimately breaks down into radium and radon gas, has a half-life of 76,000 years which means its radioactive by-products will be bio-available to migrate into the eco-systems for hundreds of thousands of years. Creating this long-term risk for a few years of profitable mining, with few local benefits, is, in a nutshell, what unsustainable development means.
Sustainability requires a shift in perspective; rather than focusing on the short-term value of Cameco’s stocks on the market, we need developmental indicators in place that require us to protect the planet for future generations. The proposed Millennium mine would be another step in the wrong direction, further degrading the land and undermining the renewable economy.
The million dollar question is: will this be the uranium mine that finally catalyses widespread northern opposition to this industry and the radioactive tailings it leaves behind as it takes its big profits to the bank?
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9965
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
URANIUM INDUSTRY SELF-PROMOTES: NORTH REMAINS “AMONG POOREST
by Oscar » Sun Sep 05, 2010 10:13 am
URANIUM INDUSTRY SELF-PROMOTES: NORTH REMAINS “AMONG POOREST”
BY Jim Harding Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in the R-Town News August 20, 2010
The uranium industry recently held their “3rd International Conference on Uranium”. While company executives and technical people engaged in expensive self-promotion, the Conference Board of Canada released a study showing that, in spite of the “uranium boom”, Northern Saskatchewan remains one of the poorest regions in all of Canada.
Uranium 2010 was held in Saskatoon, where the 2nd International Conference had previously been held. It was organized, promoted and keynoted by the biggest of the industry’s multinationals – France’s Areva and Canada’s Cameco, who together own all six active uranium mines in the North and mine on many other continents. They ran the show. Seven of nine members of the organizing committee were from Cameco or Areva. These corporations were responsible for publicity, chairing, handling funds, arranging tours to mines, and even running a “short course”. Another sponsor, the Metallurgy Society did the registration.
Cameco and Areva CEO’s and Presidents gave keynote addresses. They were joined by Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd, whose department, along with Enterprise Saskatchewan, was a symbolic sponsor of the event. Most disconcerting, the President and CEO of the nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), was also a keynote speaker. So much for arm’s length relations between the industry and our public protector!
THE UDP ALL OVER AGAIN
Workshops covered the whole nuclear fuel cycle: uranium mining and milling, refining and conversion, nuclear power and nuclear wastes and fuel reprocessing. Of course it was all from an industry perspective! There were no independent researchers or critics of the industry. No dialogue with northern communities. The agenda looked a lot like the nuclear expansion plan that came from the government-appointed Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) in 2009. It was the same people from the same corporations promoting pretty much the same thing. When the UDP plan was finally brought out of the corporate board rooms into the public light, it was overwhelming rejected; eighty percent of participants opposed nuclear power plants and a nuclear waste dump in Saskatchewan. But those who run and benefit from this industry apparently can’t take “no” for an answer!
The industry has a lot of money for self-promotion. In 2006, when the value of uranium sales sky-rocketed to $600 million, the share going to the province as taxes and royalties remained flat, at only $43 million. In 2008 Cameco’s CEO got $4.5 million in compensation, even higher than British Petroleum’s (BP’s) CEO got this year.
Uranium 2010 showed that Northern Saskatchewan remains open for uranium business. But the event wasn’t really open to the public or those who espouse a sustainable economy for the North. Registration for non-members was $1,050, and even workshop speakers had to pay $900 to be able to mingle and network with the nuclear deal-makers.
NO BOOM FOR NORTHERNERS
While the nuclear industry was promoting itself, the Conference Board released a study showing that Northern Saskatchewan is the second poorest region in all Canada, just behind northeastern Manitoba. The study by the Centre for the North found the annual median income – the midpoint of income distribution, was only $13,600. Contrast this with Northern Alberta, with an income three times this, of $42,806. To put this into the perspective: it would take the median income of 330 northern Saskatchewan residents to equal that of Cameo’s CEO.
Canada’s five poorest regions are all northern, but so are three of the richest. The richest are around Fort McMurray, Alberta; Yellowknife and Fort Smith, NWT; and Fort Nelson, B.C. Fort McMurray’s wealth is primarily based on tar sand extraction; Yellowknife and Fort Smith rely on mining, energy and forestry; and Fort Nelson has natural gas and forestry. These are all hinterland extraction industry communities where thousands of southerners have resettled. Contrast this to Northern Saskatchewan, where the uranium industry brings up most workers, flies them in and out of isolated mines, and takes the mineral wealth out of the north.
But would southerners really want to relocate to northern communities downwind or downstream from accumulating radioactive tailings? In southern areas of Canada, from Nova Scotia to Ontario to B.C., there are moratoria or calls for bans on uranium exploration. The double standard which allows these radioactive mines to operate near Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan’s North is rightly called “environmental racism”.
When the Blakeney NDP expanded uranium mining in the 1980s there was much hype about this being the “magic bullet” to end northern poverty. All Indigenous groups wanted a moratorium to protect land rights, but most businesses and some First Nations and Métis politicians joined the “gold fever” bandwagon. Thirty years later, after most of the high-grade ore has been removed, the destitution remains. The biggest legacy for the North will not be jobs or money but toxic, radioactive tailings that threaten the hunting, fishing and gathering that the majority of Dene, Métis and Cree peoples still depend upon. Protecting these renewable resources, not sacrificing lakes and waterways to the uranium industry, remains the path to a sustainable North.
WARNINGS WERE GIVEN
In 1993 the Joint Federal Provincial Panel (JFPP), assessing a rash of uranium mines in the Wollaston region, warned that the benefits of uranium wealth were not being distributed into the region. It also warned that cumulative ecological effects could permanently undermine the renewable economy. Their recommendation that Areva’s Midwest mine not be approved and its McClean Lake mine be postponed fell on deaf ears in the Romanow NDP government of the day.
Speaking at the Nunavut Mining Symposium in April 2009, past Chief and 22-year Councillor of the Denesuline Hatchet Lake First Nation, Ed Benoanie, said “almost all of the workers come from the south”. He claimed uranium mining “hasn’t created any economic opportunities for our community. A few people from the community work there, but we have 80% unemployment.” The findings of the Conference Board confirm his observations. We will have to wait and see whether the people of Nunavut heed Benoanie’s warning as they face the lure of uranium mining, as they did in the early 1990s, when it was turned down.
Previous NDP governments started referring to Saskatchewan as a ‘have province”, and Premier Wall continually highlights this new image in his campaigning. While Saskatchewan’s economy has sometimes led growth in the country, the North remains among the poorest of the poor. The colonial and “racial” divide remains deep.
Little wonder that Uranium 2010 didn’t include Northern impacts on its agenda!
http://jimharding.brinkster.net
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
BY Jim Harding Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in the R-Town News August 20, 2010
The uranium industry recently held their “3rd International Conference on Uranium”. While company executives and technical people engaged in expensive self-promotion, the Conference Board of Canada released a study showing that, in spite of the “uranium boom”, Northern Saskatchewan remains one of the poorest regions in all of Canada.
Uranium 2010 was held in Saskatoon, where the 2nd International Conference had previously been held. It was organized, promoted and keynoted by the biggest of the industry’s multinationals – France’s Areva and Canada’s Cameco, who together own all six active uranium mines in the North and mine on many other continents. They ran the show. Seven of nine members of the organizing committee were from Cameco or Areva. These corporations were responsible for publicity, chairing, handling funds, arranging tours to mines, and even running a “short course”. Another sponsor, the Metallurgy Society did the registration.
Cameco and Areva CEO’s and Presidents gave keynote addresses. They were joined by Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd, whose department, along with Enterprise Saskatchewan, was a symbolic sponsor of the event. Most disconcerting, the President and CEO of the nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), was also a keynote speaker. So much for arm’s length relations between the industry and our public protector!
THE UDP ALL OVER AGAIN
Workshops covered the whole nuclear fuel cycle: uranium mining and milling, refining and conversion, nuclear power and nuclear wastes and fuel reprocessing. Of course it was all from an industry perspective! There were no independent researchers or critics of the industry. No dialogue with northern communities. The agenda looked a lot like the nuclear expansion plan that came from the government-appointed Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) in 2009. It was the same people from the same corporations promoting pretty much the same thing. When the UDP plan was finally brought out of the corporate board rooms into the public light, it was overwhelming rejected; eighty percent of participants opposed nuclear power plants and a nuclear waste dump in Saskatchewan. But those who run and benefit from this industry apparently can’t take “no” for an answer!
The industry has a lot of money for self-promotion. In 2006, when the value of uranium sales sky-rocketed to $600 million, the share going to the province as taxes and royalties remained flat, at only $43 million. In 2008 Cameco’s CEO got $4.5 million in compensation, even higher than British Petroleum’s (BP’s) CEO got this year.
Uranium 2010 showed that Northern Saskatchewan remains open for uranium business. But the event wasn’t really open to the public or those who espouse a sustainable economy for the North. Registration for non-members was $1,050, and even workshop speakers had to pay $900 to be able to mingle and network with the nuclear deal-makers.
NO BOOM FOR NORTHERNERS
While the nuclear industry was promoting itself, the Conference Board released a study showing that Northern Saskatchewan is the second poorest region in all Canada, just behind northeastern Manitoba. The study by the Centre for the North found the annual median income – the midpoint of income distribution, was only $13,600. Contrast this with Northern Alberta, with an income three times this, of $42,806. To put this into the perspective: it would take the median income of 330 northern Saskatchewan residents to equal that of Cameo’s CEO.
Canada’s five poorest regions are all northern, but so are three of the richest. The richest are around Fort McMurray, Alberta; Yellowknife and Fort Smith, NWT; and Fort Nelson, B.C. Fort McMurray’s wealth is primarily based on tar sand extraction; Yellowknife and Fort Smith rely on mining, energy and forestry; and Fort Nelson has natural gas and forestry. These are all hinterland extraction industry communities where thousands of southerners have resettled. Contrast this to Northern Saskatchewan, where the uranium industry brings up most workers, flies them in and out of isolated mines, and takes the mineral wealth out of the north.
But would southerners really want to relocate to northern communities downwind or downstream from accumulating radioactive tailings? In southern areas of Canada, from Nova Scotia to Ontario to B.C., there are moratoria or calls for bans on uranium exploration. The double standard which allows these radioactive mines to operate near Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan’s North is rightly called “environmental racism”.
When the Blakeney NDP expanded uranium mining in the 1980s there was much hype about this being the “magic bullet” to end northern poverty. All Indigenous groups wanted a moratorium to protect land rights, but most businesses and some First Nations and Métis politicians joined the “gold fever” bandwagon. Thirty years later, after most of the high-grade ore has been removed, the destitution remains. The biggest legacy for the North will not be jobs or money but toxic, radioactive tailings that threaten the hunting, fishing and gathering that the majority of Dene, Métis and Cree peoples still depend upon. Protecting these renewable resources, not sacrificing lakes and waterways to the uranium industry, remains the path to a sustainable North.
WARNINGS WERE GIVEN
In 1993 the Joint Federal Provincial Panel (JFPP), assessing a rash of uranium mines in the Wollaston region, warned that the benefits of uranium wealth were not being distributed into the region. It also warned that cumulative ecological effects could permanently undermine the renewable economy. Their recommendation that Areva’s Midwest mine not be approved and its McClean Lake mine be postponed fell on deaf ears in the Romanow NDP government of the day.
Speaking at the Nunavut Mining Symposium in April 2009, past Chief and 22-year Councillor of the Denesuline Hatchet Lake First Nation, Ed Benoanie, said “almost all of the workers come from the south”. He claimed uranium mining “hasn’t created any economic opportunities for our community. A few people from the community work there, but we have 80% unemployment.” The findings of the Conference Board confirm his observations. We will have to wait and see whether the people of Nunavut heed Benoanie’s warning as they face the lure of uranium mining, as they did in the early 1990s, when it was turned down.
Previous NDP governments started referring to Saskatchewan as a ‘have province”, and Premier Wall continually highlights this new image in his campaigning. While Saskatchewan’s economy has sometimes led growth in the country, the North remains among the poorest of the poor. The colonial and “racial” divide remains deep.
Little wonder that Uranium 2010 didn’t include Northern impacts on its agenda!
http://jimharding.brinkster.net
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies who lives in the Qu’Appelle Valley.
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