HARDING: WEEKLY - Saskatchewan Sustainability

[Oscar]

WATERSHED GATHERING ATTRACTS FIVE HUNDRED

BY Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan September 10, 2010

I have just returned from the Watershed Gathering at Wollaston Lake August 19th to 23rd. Five hundred people attended this event which was only accessible by plane or boat. Some Dene travelled four days by canoe to attend. Protecting water clearly draws on deep commitment.

This was the first such gathering in Saskatchewan. The Keepers of the Water group sponsoring the event formed in the Athabasca Watershed, mostly in response to the destructive impact of the tar-sands. Earlier gatherings have occurred at Fort Simpson, NWT in 2006, Fort St. John, B.C. in 2007, and Fort Chipewyan, Alberta in 2008. The one planned for Wollaston in 2009 was cancelled due to the H1N1 scare and rescheduled for this August, hosted by the Hatchet Lake Denesuline First Nation. Next year’s gathering will be in Manitoba’s north.

Hatchet Lake Chief Bart Tsannie invited us “to share in all our community, our land, and our people have to offer.” We did and the hospitality was overwhelming; I’ve never eaten so much caribou. I was honoured to have been invited to speak to the assembly. Chief Tsannie asked us to “understand the role the clean water and a healthy ecosystem play in our quality of life” and to recognize that “all water is sacred.” He recognized the work of all councillors, including Edward Benoanie who has been outspoken about the lack of benefits going to the north after decades of uranium mining. He also acknowledged Vice Chief Don Deranger of the Prince Albert Grand Council, which is working on a land-use plan for the Athabasca region. (Deranger wasn’t identified at the gathering as also being on Cameco’s Board.) All participants are beholding to the good work of event coordinator Brandy Smart and the hundreds of community volunteers who took care of all visitors.

Wollaston Lake was a fitting location. It is the largest lake within Saskatchewan’s borders and the largest fresh water lake anywhere flowing into two watersheds: the Arctic to the west and Hudson Bay to the east. The Lake is a spectacular creation of nature. That most people in southern Saskatchewan remain unaware of its power and beauty speaks legions about the two solitudes remaining in our neo-colonial era.

The gathering was an opportunity for Dene from across Canada’s northwest to sign a Memorandum of Understanding about protecting the waters that they share, and to “compare notes” on the impact of toxic tailings ponds at Alberta’s tar sands and at Saskatchewan’s uranium mines. It was an opportunity for southern environmental research-activists to dialogue with Dene who want to protect their sustainable land-based economy. It was the beginning of the important task of merging traditional knowledge with critical environmental science.

CORPORATE BRANDING PERVASIVE

Most pertinent was the fact that the Wollaston region has the most concentrated uranium mining anywhere. Six mines operated by Cameco or Areva are just west or south of the hamlet of Wollaston Lake. Though these mines aren’t yet facing the international public stigma of the filthy tar-sands, the socio-economic and environmental realities of uranium mining are beginning to sink in.

The influence of the uranium industry is pervasive. Together Cameco and Areva contributed $15,000 toward the gathering. (Who knows my air-fare may have been paid by the uranium industry.) After the Chiefs spoke at their impressive opening ceremony, they gathered for a group photo. As I went over to take a picture of them in their splendid headdresses I noticed that the hockey scoreboard situated just to their right, behind them, had “Cameco” at the bottom. A little to the right was the Areva logo. At the main platform I noticed a large “Cameco” sign to the right of the podium where the Chiefs had just spoken. Cameco and Areva sponsored a meal at the culture camp, where they gave out small “made in China” flashlights stamped with Cameco and Areva logos. The flashlight battery was charged by renewable energy (pumping a small handle) which was somewhat ironic.

The industry was clearly trying to brand the community. Thankfully the planning group insisted that non-industry resource people be heard. Dr. Manuel Pino of the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, who directs an American Indian Studies program and is researching the health effects of uranium mining, gave the first keynote address. Jamie Kneen of Minewatch and I started the session on the “nuclear debate”. I chronicled the contamination of water all along the nuclear fuel system, from radioactive tailings from uranium milling to radioactive hydrogen (tritium) going into Lake Ontario from nuclear plants. I highlighted the radioactive legacy in the Uranium City area, especially at the Gunnar mine on Lake Athabasca. I noted that there had been no fulfillment of the “duty to consult” with any of Saskatchewan’s uranium mines.

Our session was to end by 10:30 a.m. but it flowed into testimonies of elders which continued to 1 p.m. After that, as Vancouver writer Rita Wong put it, “A one hour elder’s panel on the conference schedule spontaneously expanded into over eight and a half hours of testimony over two days, as 23 elders spoke movingly of how important water is, how cancer caused by mining has killed many family members, how uranium mining and tar sands expansion is poisoning the land.” The cat was out of the bag.

THE CROSS-CULTURAL CHALLENGE

Wollaston is in Treaty 10 territory, and many of the Elders and Chiefs spoke of the federal government abandoning its obligations to protect the Treaties. The federal transfer of natural resources to the provinces in the 1930s came up over and over. While the Treaties could provide a legal basis for creating a sustainable northern economy, they seem inconsequential in this corporate-branding environment. Sometimes I felt like I was living in the era of the Hudson Bay Company, where the Crown had empowered corporations to exploit the land and its peoples; though the HBC was more benign than today’s corporate neo-colonialism as it didn’t trade in toxic resources.

There’s a lot to do to protect northern watersheds. The implications of proposed tar-sands expansion in the Buffalo Narrows area of Saskatchewan and uranium mining exploration across the Alberta border from Cluff Lake need to be better understood and sustainable economic alternatives promoted. Northern communities need to have access to independent environmental science capacities so they are not dependent on industry-funded monitoring. Jobs based on renewable resources need to be created; Wollaston fish still have to be frozen and shipped to northern Manitoba for processing and packaging. When I was talking to Glen Strong who heads up the Athabasca Enterprise Corporation I pointed to the huge roof of the high school and said I could envisage thermal and photovoltaic (PV) panels providing hot water and electricity, making the community less dependent on propane. Someday an offshore island could have a wind farm, and a local economy that protects the water could flourish.

One motion passed at the end of the gathering spoke to all in attendance, whether from the north or south, Indigenous or settler background: “We the Elders call upon the leadership and grassroots community members of our watersheds to come together and to develop effective, holistic, and intergenerational strategies to protect the watershed for our future generations. We the Elders oppose the harmful actions that have transpired by industry and call upon and empower our young people and elected leaders to embrace traditional knowledge and take action that guides us in a new direction.”

Next week I’ll look at how conflicts of interest are interfering with finding this new direction.

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

CONFLICT ON INTEREST IN NORTHERN SASKATCHEWAN

BY Jim Harding

Saskatchewan Sustainability

Published in R-Town News September 17, 2010

On my recent trip to the Keepers of the Water gathering at Wollaston Lake I witnessed the intricacies of northern uranium politics. On June 29th the Inuit group Nunavummiut Makitagunarninit had called for a public inquiry on the proposed Kiggavik uranium mine in Nunavut. It opposed leaving the decision solely to the regulatory process, arguing a public inquiry “is more transparent, flexible and democratic”. It added, “Nunavut’s organizations have already shown themselves incapable of protecting the public interest” and “land claims institutions are not equipped to deal with the complex long-term cumulative effects of a nascent uranium industry in the territory.”

They were showing foresight for, in Saskatchewan, the incremental spread of the uranium industry has led to the Wollaston region being inundated with mines and toxic tailings. And though a 1993 federal-provincial inquiry had raised the alarm about cumulative effects, these continue to be ignored as Cameco and Areva forge ahead while the profitability of uranium remains high.

You might expect that all Saskatchewan Aboriginal leaders would support this Inuit call for the duty to consult. However, in the August 16th Nunatsiaq News, Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC) Vice Chief Don Deranger claimed the Inuit group was giving “a highly misleading picture of the relation of the uranium mining industry in Northern Saskatchewan with local stakeholders.” Presenting himself “as a First Nations leader from northern Saskatchewan”, but later identifying himself as a Board member of Cameco, he said the uranium industry has earned its public support “based on how the companies protect the environment and support local communities.”

CAMECO ISN’T DENE PERSPECTIVE

The article was headlined “A Saskatchewan Dene Perspective on uranium” but Deranger was writing as a Cameco Board member. He refers to “our industry”. When he affirms the industry “does many things to make sure that northern people benefit most from the development of Saskatchewan uranium” he uses the corporate “We”, as in “We employ aboriginal elders”, “We fund charitable initiatives”, etc.

Many of his claims don’t withstand factual examination. That “northern people benefit most” from uranium mining is absurd; recent research shows northern Saskatchewan remains among the poorest regions in Canada in spite of the “uranium boom”. That Cameco’s McArthur River mine occupies “less than two square kilometers” doesn’t mean “the footprint of uranium mining is small”. The footprint of the whole nuclear fuel cycle, including the 34 nuclear plants that Deranger says can be fueled by one year’s uranium from McArthur, must all be considered. This includes the enormous amounts of water contaminated by these reactors and their steady buildup of nuclear wastes.

But Cameco officials who likely helped draft Deranger’s letter are not independent energy impact analysts; they are corporate PR people. And this blurring of the lines between Aboriginal and corporate voices is clearly what the uranium industry wants. With one foot in the PAGC, overseeing Athabasca land-use planning, Deranger is an ideal person to be on Cameco’s Board. Aboriginal voices like Deranger and past PAGC Grand Chief, and now a Cameco Vice President, Gary Merasty, can be effective in countering aboriginal opposition to uranium mining; they are helping spread the industry’s influence into Nunavut and Northern Quebec.

WHAT’S “LEARNING TOGETHER?”

Some may feel this close relationship with the uranium industry will somehow work to benefit aboriginal communities. But disinformation can never lay the ground for pursuing justice. And disinformation is what we are getting. Deranger is also a key promoter of “Learning Together”, “an aboriginal approach to Mining relationships” which held its 5th conference this past April. Its mission is unambiguous: “We believe in the positive economic impact exploration and mining development can bring to aboriginal communities…” It has eagle, moose, fox, beaver and polar bear corporate sponsors; Cameco is a wolf sponsor.

At the Canadian Aboriginal Mining Association (CAMA) Conference in Saskatoon last November, Deranger was treated as a reliable resource person for the Mistissini First Nations from northern Quebec who had concerns about the impact of uranium exploration on their traditional trapping area. According to the Learning Together site, Deranger, who prior to going on Cameco’s Board had worked in the industry “for nearly 30 years”, told them unabashedly “uranium is one of the safest minerals to be mined in Canada”. The Quebec Cree also met with Cameco VP Gary Merasty who “organized a meeting with a team of managers and mine Elders.”

This is no way to assess the risks and benefits of uranium mining. But it is a way to create a façade of Aboriginal self-determination. Aboriginal people with past or present roles as Grand Chief or Vice Chief clearly carry weight when they endorse corporate expansion. Cameco couldn’t ask for a better way to influence aboriginal communities who live close to profitable uranium ore finds. But there is nothing scientific about this approach. Nor is there meant to be! Near the end of the article about CAMA the author says “In each of our meetings we asked every person we met if they knew anyone who had been sick from uranium mining and not a single person was able to recall anyone.” That’s no way to collect “evidence”.

It must be very difficult for those having deference for their political leaders, as one way to maintain cultural identity, to witness this corporate assimilation. Apologists of the uranium industry typically adopt an “amoral” stance that downplays end-uses. Uranium has only two uses: for building nuclear weapons, including depleted uranium (DU) weapons, and for fueling nuclear plants, which create long-lived radioactive wastes and pose a threat from ongoing radioactive releases and nuclear accidents. Renewable energy can be created without these risks of proliferation and radioactive contamination.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST UNACCEPTABLE

These conflicts of interest are not only of concern to aboriginal communities. Deranger’s membership on the Keepers of the Water board that organized the Wollaston gathering has been contentious. Some wanted him to resign while others wanted to wait and see if there might be a good outcome from his wearing so many hats. But at some point you need to look at what people are doing, not at what they say they are doing.

At first I too was confused and I even thought there might be two Don Derangers. Speaking at Wollaston as PAGC Vice Chief, Deranger mentioned that the Athabasca Dene were calling for a judicial review of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) allowing Areva’s Midwest project to be changed to a giant open pit mine without any aboriginal approval. This was the same CNSC that Deranger had put his complete trust in when he criticized the Inuit’s call for a public inquiry. Deranger didn’t mention that the original Midwest underground proposal hadn’t gone through any “duty to consult”, nor that the 1993 federal-provincial review had recommended against this mine due to cumulative effects in the Wollaston region. Nor that in 1996 past PAGC Vice Chief John Dantouze resigned in protest over this panels’ mishandling of the review of several mines proposed by both Cameco and Areva.

No mention either that, in 2003, in the face of overall opposition from the community of Wollaston Lake and without any environmental review, Cameco (on whose board Deranger sits) breached a dike separating the Collins Bay uranium pit from Wollaston Lake. Deranger mentions the problem with an Areva mine without providing a full context and totally sidesteps problems with the nearby Cameco mine. But what did I expect; I was witnessing political “spin.”

At the end of August the Nunavut government announced it would not hold a public inquiry and ensure “free, prior and informed consent” on uranium mining, and it’s hard to imagine that Deranger’s high-profile letter didn’t play some role in this.

Next time I’ll discuss why northern communities need some control of environmental monitoring.

See: http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

THE NORTH DESERVES BETTER

The First in a Two-Part Series on “How Environmental Protection is Being Compromised in the North”

BY Jim Harding Saskatchewan Sustainability

Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan September 24, 2010

The North Saskatchewan Environmental Quality Committee, or NSEQC, was started in 1995 “to help bridge (the) information gap between northerners, government and the uranium mining industry.” It assumes that “by talking and learning together all participants help ensure that uranium mining activity takes place in an environmentally responsible manner…” Bill Hutchinson, the Minister responsible, says it is “promoting trust and understanding among…communities, the uranium mining industry and the government regulators…”

The key question is how NSEQC works and whether it has any major impact on what companies do. It’s good that it’s decentralized into three Environmental Quality Committees (EQCs), one each from Athabasca, the West Side and South Central area, but it’s not independent from the uranium industry or the government which promotes it. It’s administrated by the Northern Mines Monitoring Secretariat and has “staff representation from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC)” whose independent regulatory status was compromised when Prime Minister Harper removed its head for trying to ensure the safety of the Chalk River nuclear plant. And the uranium companies Cameco and Areva provide NSEQC “technical expertise, arranging and hosting mine site visits and … various workshops.” The viewpoints presented by company “experts” can hardly be considered balanced. The North deserves better!

INDUSTRY BIAS DOMINATES

NSEQC boasts 14 years of “successfully providing northerners a voice in uranium mining”, but it’s a voice without regulatory authority, and no real power of its own. NSEQC claims it creates “critical communications between our communities and uranium industry activities”, but in practice does this mean that companies use NSQEC meetings and reports to promote the nuclear industry? Does it mean that northerners communicate or even complain while industry carries on with its contaminating business ventures?

A close look at NSEQC’s 2009 “Report to Communities” helps answer these questions and is also a bird’s eye view of what’s going on at uranium mines in the North. In November 2009 the industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) presented to all three EQCs. NSEQC reports this as the NWMO “making communities aware of opportunities to host a nuclear waste management storage site.” It goes on, “There will be incredible economic benefits to such a community, but suitable geology and accessibility are also factors.” This shows the nuclear promotional role of what is said to be an environmental protection body. It is all slightly Orwellian.

About the Cigar Lake Flooding the report says, “When excavating equipment inadvertently broke through the roof into the sandstone, the water naturally moved to its lowest point.” Later it admits “Water is proving to be a major problem at Cigar Lake”, but it never discusses the role that Cameco’s rush to get this profitable high-grade ore onto the market may have played in the flooding. It treats the flooding innocuously: “The water is kept out by a clay envelope around the ore and a barrier of very strong basement rock. It was a breach of this barrier that caused the mine to flood in 2006.” Another section on “How Cigar Lake was Dewatered” acknowledges that in 2008 “the mine flooded again when clays which were sealing areas on the higher 420 level dissolved and washed out after being submerged in the first inflow.” You get the feeling that the clay, not Cameco’s excavation, is to blame. It continues, “The decision was made to seal off the 420 level completely. This was done by lowering empty grout bags…then inflating them and filling them with grout (thin concrete)”, all described in amoral engineering terms.

The Report goes on, “In Stony Rapids elders and the public raised many other issues, which did not directly pertain to this project”. But the issues aren’t mentioned. It continues: “In Saskatoon, with a smaller and more experienced audience…the workshop went into much more technical detail.” There is paternalism expressed here and apparently holding meetings in Saskatoon, where Cameco and Areva officials are headquartered, is more to the liking of NSEQC bureaucrats.

An EQC expressed concern about Cameco’s plan to discharge Cigar Lake mine water into Seru Bay “an arm of Waterbury Lake”, since this lake “is one of the prime trout fishing lakes in the province.” Company consultants replied “fish from Seru Bay would be safe to eat, although fishing would be discouraged for safety reasons. In winter, the diffuser could cause dangerously thin ice conditions.” This semantic twist still means fishing will be detrimentally affected.

COMMUNITY CONCERNS DISMISSED

EQC members have real concerns. South Central “reps again pressed the company (at Key Lake) to move the above-ground tailings into a pit, either by physically moving it or by re-milling it.” The Cameco rep simply replied “that re-milling is not practical, and that new space would have to be created…”. Cameco then reported they wanted to increase the space in the Dielmann pit to take “all tailings from McArthur River ore.” The ongoing sloughing of sand into that pit, which Minewatch estimates at one million cubic metres so far, is not seriously addressed.

The McArthur River report mentions “control of molybdenum and selenium discharged in effluent, and handling of spills (only one so far this year).” Only one so far! It adds “More than 150 million pounds of ore slurry has (sic) been transported to Key Lake since 2000” which is described as “the equivalent of 40,000 truckloads and six million km travelled.” This shows the staggering scale of the uranium industry’s impact on the North. The report acknowledges “Concern about a proposed ore haul over public roads from McArthur River to McClean Lake by Arevea ”. Concerns are raised and the companies carry on.

We discover mishaps not reported in the southern press. The Rabbit Lake mine report says, “In January seepage of gypsum and uranium liquid was discovered during excavation for a new pH clarifier. The entire mill floor has to be sealed with resin to contain any future leakage that may occur, and recovery wells installed.” The assumption seems to be that informing northerners of some incidents will normalize them, remove the element of surprise and lessen public criticism. This process might even create a psychological sense of responsibility among the northerners privy to these details. It is also certain that companies are selective about what they tell the EQCs.

The McClean Lake report mentions “There were a number of accidental releases at the site…” An Areva official was “asked about the possibility of building a 52 km road link between McArthur River and Cigar Lake”, but replied “this would take at least two years and the preference was to haul the ore over public highways, 920 km each way.” The EQC “stated concerns about safety when hauling slurry on public highways, and that the original proposal for two trucks a day in each direction had doubled.” The concern was expressed, but to no avail.

The Cluff Lake report reads, “Asked why the waste rock was not placed into the pits, Areva’s (official) explained that there was too much volume for the capacity of the pits…” The possibility of this occurring was dismissed by industry during the Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry (CLBI) in 1978. But that was then, and this is now!

The report on Cameco’s new Millenium mine says “Cameco would plan to mill the ore at Key Lake, minimizing the environmental footprint at the Millenium site.” The environmental footprint will of course greatly enlarge at, and from the massive trucking to, Key Lake. Cameco officials explained mine water would be discharged “into nearby Moon Lake”. The EQC “suggested it go back into Slush Lake instead, since Moon Lake is a good fishing lake.” Showing where the power lies, Cameco simply replied it “will address this option in the EA process.”

The report on the Beaverlodge mine, closed in 1982, admits “When the mines were operating, environmental standards were non-existent. Tailings went directly into lakes. The first water treatment systems were introduced in the mid-1970s.” And while the local residents were never involved in the decision to go ahead with this mine, used for nuclear weapons, they are now belatedly involved in creating “remediation scenarios”. There is something cynical about taking some responsibility for remediation when you had no part in the contamination; participation should come before not after such consequential events. Meanwhile nearly 30 years later uranium mines continue on without upholding any duty to consult.

NORTHERN CANCER RATES HIGHER

Similar admissions were made about the Gunnar mine which closed in 1964: “Tailings were pumped over a hill into nearby Mudford Lake. When the site was abandoned, the operator just walked away, leaving everything as it was”. Other concerns “include a 110-metre deep flooded pit which is seeping into Lake Athabasca; a 2.7 million cubic metre waste rock pile containing other assorted industrial waste; and 4.4 million tonnes of tailings close to, or draining into, or in, the water of Langley Bay” in Lake Athabasca. It notes that some areas have gamma radiation readings such that they “will have to be covered.” Regarding the closed Lorado uranium mill the report says “It drains into Nero Lake, which is very acidic because of tailings beside and under the lake.” The lasting legacy of uranium mining will clearly not be jobs but radioactive tailings.

The section on “Factors Affecting Northern Health” acknowledges what many Wollaston elders fear: that “Overall cancers exceed the provincial rate; our lung cancer rate is the highest in the province. Bowel and breast cancer rates now equal the south; cervical cancer, while high, is decreasing.” This should be cause for concern and further reason for baseline and thorough epidemiological studies. But rather than affirming the need for this, NSEQC’s report says “…health authorities and other scientists have concluded that there is no additional risk of cancers to a person working at a mine today. In fact, a prefeasibility study concluded there was no sense doing a study of modern miners, since radiation doses are so low.” This matter is far from pat: if you don’t look you can’t find out. The build-up of radioactive tailings will be a burden for the North long after the mines close.

Community reps have deep concerns about the cumulative ecological mess being made by the uranium industry. Meanwhile, at NSEQC meetings company officials promote their industry without independent information being available to northerners. This is “consultation” with loaded dice and the North deserves better.

In Part Two I explore how the industry influences vital environmental monitoring in the North.

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

THE NORTH DESERVES BETTER, Part 2

By Jim Harding
Saskatchewan Sustainability
Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan - October 1, 2010

Last time, I looked at how the North Saskatchewan Environmental Quality Committee (NSEQC) is too close to industry to have any significant influence on protecting the North. Here, I look at how the Athabasca Working Group (AWG) environmental monitoring program is also too close to industry and how this undercuts its scientific credibility and ability to reassure northerners that it continues to be safe to live off the land.

One of the main themes of the Keepers of the Water gathering at Wollaston Lake in August was the need to bring traditional land-based knowledge and critical environmental science closer together. Southern scientists and activists closely listened as many elders spoke passionately of this. Such a convergence can begin to occur when there is systematic community-based monitoring of the uranium industry. Some may say that there already is such monitoring, but after my recent trip to Wollaston I am not convinced.

IS “CAN-NORTH” INDEPENDENT?

CanNorth is promoted as “Canada North Environmental Services”. Operating since 1981 when the uranium boom started, it identifies itself as “A First Nations Company”. Its objectives however aren’t independent; it provides “cost-effective environmental services to mining development” and also “facilitates communication between government, mining development and aboriginal people”.

The Athabasca Working Group (AWG) which in 2000 initiated the program to monitor the uranium industry has both Cameco and Areva as “industrial partners”. While the AWG involves people from the seven communities closest to uranium mines, the communities don’t control the monitoring. It’s managed by CanNorth, and as its brochure says, “CanNorth has been involved in the design, implementation and environmental projects for numerous mining developments.”

CanNorth’s commitment to community participation and training aboriginal people may be something to build on. And I take it seriously when it says “The goal is to protect a remote living community with a proud history and to safeguard the wildlife that lives in the environment.” But environmental health monitoring should be done by people who don’t have the uranium industry as clients and partners. Otherwise the methods and results will remain suspect; the monitoring that occurs within this “conflict of interest” will be limited and open to industrial bias. We have to assume that CanNorth’s sampling methods are standardized over time and areas. However, how CanNorth interprets the results of its monitoring of water, air, fish, plants and animals is sometimes open to serious question.

THE 2008 REPORT ON WOLLASTON LAKE

CanNorth’s 2008 Report on Wollaston Lake gives levels of copper, lead, nickel, molybdenum, zinc, selenium, arsenic as well as uranium and radium 226. But how it constructs conclusions is questionable. It should compare the levels of these toxins from before and after uranium mines opened in the area. But, because no such baseline data was collected, it uses the method of comparing what it calls “effects” and “reference” communities.

It takes measures at Collins Bay and Hidden Bay, which are close to the Rabbit Lake uranium mine, along with measures from across the lake, at Welcome Bay, near the hamlet of Wollaston Post. These are considered communities where “effects” of uranium mining may show. It compares these measures to Fidler Bay, northwest of the hamlet, which it calls a “reference site because there is no influence from uranium mining.”

But it can’t say there is “no influence from uranium mining”. This disregards long-term bioaccumulation of toxins within the lake food chain. In all its reports it acknowledges that “It is important to sample sediment, because small animals that live in the sediment are often eaten by fish”. But it stops there. These toxin-carrying fish are eaten by humans, and the cumulating levels in humans also need to be measured. Over time it becomes deceptive to take one bay in the same aquatic system as a “control” area for this may just average out significant industrial impacts.

CanNorth downplays differences in toxin levels. Regarding sediment levels it says “In 2008, 2007, 2003 and 2002, the uranium levels in Hidden Bay were above the lowest level thought to have an effect on aquatic life.” But then it says “This guideline is important for small animals living in the sediment and is not a human health guideline”. This may be true, but measures from humans eating fish that feed from the sediment are required to address the matter of human health. It then continues “Hidden Bay is located a fair distance from the Wollaston Lake communities and the levels of these parameters were low in sediment from Welcome Bay, which is located near the communities.” This actually begs the question of whether fish affected by the higher levels in Hidden Bay are consumed across the lake. Then, almost as an afterthought, CanNorth admits “Treated effluent from Rabbit Lake mine is released upstream of Hidden Bay.”

CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

A more systematic approach would acknowledge that the levels of uranium are likely higher in Hidden Bay because they are downstream from where the uranium mine effluent is released. And lower levels of uranium in the sediment further from the mine, and nearer to the hamlet of Wollaston Lake, is not only to be expected but irrelevant to assessing the risk from uranium mining contaminants. Wollaston residents likely eat fish that feed across the lake in Hidden Bay. Fish that eat in Hidden Bay may be caught near Welcome Bay. Fish behavior and human consumption need to be directly studied.

However, similar confusion is shown regarding toxic levels in fish. Its report says “In 2008, lake whitefish from Welcome, Hidden and Collins bays contained higher copper, selenium, and in the case of Collins Bay, arsenic, than the ‘reference’ site fish.” It also found higher copper levels for northern pike in these bays. However, it neutralizes these findings by then saying “In both fish species the 2008 levels were similar to or lower than ‘reference’ measurements recorded in previous years.” The report then says “This indicates that these levels are expected for the area” and draws the conclusion “…there are no obvious environmental or health concerns.” It makes unjustified leaps. CanNorth constantly reminds us that these toxins can “occur naturally”; however, without pre-uranium mine baselines they can’t say that these levels are expected. And without knowing fish behavior they can’t assume anything about how or where the fish digested these toxins. What matters is whether uranium mining is adding toxins to the environment, whether these are bio-accumulating within the food chain and present a short or long-term risk to wildlife and humans.

CanNorth’s monitoring is being done with its industrial partners to reassure local residents that it’s safe to drink the water, breath the air, catch fish, eat caribou and pick berries. However, without having baselines and measuring toxins throughout the whole food chain, including humans, not much can be said either way.

The North needs independent, community-based monitoring where local people keep standardized samples of fish and game which can be analyzed with the help of independent environmental scientists. Even if fish and game have “acceptable” province-set levels of toxins these can bio-accumulate over time in humans who rely on food from the land. We’ve seen how this happens elsewhere, e.g. with mercury contamination from pulp and paper mills in Northern Ontario. A revamping of the North’s environmental monitoring system will be impossible as long as the uranium industry continues to be a broker and the government goes along with this. At present there are “neo-colonial” relations between industry and northerners which compromise “environmental protection”. The North deserves better!

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

SASKATCHEWAN NOW TARGETED FOR NUCLEAR DUMP

By Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News October 15, 2010

The industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has confirmed that two of the four Canadian communities that it is talking to about becoming a nuclear dump are in northern Saskatchewan; at Pinehouse and English River. The other two are in northwestern Ontario, much closer to the nuclear power plants along the Great lakes that produce almost all of the nuclear waste in Canada.

Speaking for the English River band, Councilor Bernie Eaglechild said that “nothing has been decided and talks are still at an early stage”, emphasizing that “the band can still back out at any time.” Pinehouse mayor, Mike Natomagan, who also heads the Kineepik Métis Local, had a similar message; that this “learn more opportunity does not commit the village or Métis local to any further steps.” This doesn’t mean “Pinehouse has said ‘yes’ to the project”.

NORTH BEING BRIBED

But can negotiating with the NWMO lead to informed consent. Under both international law and Canada’s Charter of Rights the “Duty to Consult” means there must be “free, prior and informed consent.” The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes it clear that this can’t involve monetary inducements such as the NWMO is using. Informed consent requires sufficient time to consider all relevant information, from all sides of the controversy, and not being bribed under the threat of losing benefits to another community.

And we know that northern communities are being bribed to take nuclear wastes. In November 2009 the NWMO met privately with all the Environmental Quality Committees (EQC) across the north. In its 2009 Report the government-run North Saskatchewan Environmental Quality Committee (NSEQC) said that the NWMO made “communities aware of the opportunities to host a nuclear waste management storage site.” It continued, “There will be incredible economic benefits to such a community, but suitable geology and accessibility are also factors.” Such bribery is outrageous and must be stopped.

The neo-colonial situation surrounding the uranium industry in the north will not and cannot encourage informed consent. Since 1991 Cameco has supported importing Ontario’s nuclear waste, including from its co-owned Bruce Power nuclear complex. It sees this as a lucrative business venture. It is now concentrating toxic, radioactive uranium tailings at its huge Key Lake mine site, and having Pinehouse, south of Key Lake, as a nuclear waste dump would fit in with a nuclear industry waste corridor in north central Saskatchewan. Prince Albert and La Ronge would become the gateway to nuclear wastes, not a gateway to northern fishing, hunting and eco-tourism.

NOT MORALLY OBLIGED

A few people cleverly argue that we are morally obliged to take back nuclear wastes from nuclear plants that use uranium from Saskatchewan. This is absurd and would lead us to become an international nuclear dump for the U.S., France, Japan and many other countries that buy uranium from here. Also, Ontario should be responsible for its own nuclear wastes and should have had a nuclear waste plan before it built all its nuclear power plants. Furthermore, after the UDP consultations, the Saskatchewan government decided not to support Bruce Power’s proposal to build nuclear plants along the North Saskatchewan River. One of the main reasons Saskatchewan people opposed nuclear power was because they did not want to create nuclear wastes.

So why are these northern communities even considering a nuclear dump? English River’s Councilor Eaglechild says “the band is tired of seeing resources hauled out of its traditional land without receiving any payments for it”, and Pinehouse’s mayor Natomagan notes the recent Conference Board study showing northern Saskatchewan having the second lowest median income of any Canadian region. This concern about the wealth of resource development not being shared with the north is compelling and, along with the cumulative ecological effects of uranium mine expansion, was the main reason why the Joint Federal Provincial Panel in the 1990s recommended against two uranium mines going ahead. But a nuclear dump makes no economic sense compared with much cheaper sustainable options such as adding value to the renewable sectors in the north. Creating a deep geological repository to store nuclear wastes would be even more capital-intensive than uranium mining. And the Conference Board study that Pinehouse’s mayor refers to, confirms that the north remained amongst Canada’s poorest regions, even though it has been the highest uranium-producing and most profitable uranium mining region in the world.

DOES NDP OPPOSE NUCLEAR DUMP?

The question we should be asking is: “why these northern Métis and First Nations communities are so hard-pressed that they have to consider bringing deadly radioactive wastes into the north to create a few toxic jobs”? An even more fundamental question is: “why the NWMO is able to end-run the people of Saskatchewan and negotiate the location of a nuclear dump in the province solely with a northern Métis or First Nations community?” Why are the rest of us being left out of the process?

In 1987, the NDP government of Manitoba acted to protect the long-term public and environmental health of its people by legislating a ban on the importation and storage of nuclear wastes. Quebec did the same thing in 2008. Do Saskatchewan people deserve anything less?

Just why is the Wall-led government allowing the industry’s NWMO to travel around the North and privately negotiate the location of a nuclear dump that will affect people throughout the whole province? At the June 2009 NDP convention held after Lingenfelter was elected as party leader the delegates passed a resolution that an NDP government will not consider “storing nuclear wastes under any circumstances.” This resolution was co-sponsored by Regina’s Douglas Park constituency which later elected Lingenfelter as an MLA. So when will the NDP opposition and its leader start standing up for the rights of Saskatchewan people on this matter? Have provincial politics become so personal and vindictive that vital matters of ecology and justice aren’t worth the effort?

The Wall government’s own 2009 public consultations on the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) found that, of the thousands who participated, over 80% opposed bringing nuclear wastes to the province. At its last provincial conference the United Church called for a ban on nuclear wastes. This public opinion, including, coming from what the government itself called the most extensive public consultations ever held on the nuclear industry in Saskatchewan, must be respected. We now need a provincial ban on transporting and storing nuclear wastes. It is the right thing to do!

Next time I will look at the risks transporting nuclear wastes from southern Ontario to northern Saskatchewan.

[Oscar]

A NUCLEAR WASTE BAN: CAN WE TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS?

BY Jim Harding

Published in the United Newspapers of Saskatchewan on December 3, 2010

The FSIN taking $1,000,000 from the industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has put nuclear waste back in the news. And apparently the Métis Nation has also taken hundreds of thousands of NWMO money. What does it mean that both large Aboriginal organizations have gone this far? Do they seriously believe that an industry-funded “information” campaign can create informed consent about a nuclear dump in Saskatchewan?

Relying on industry is fraught with dangers to Aboriginal self-determination and to our larger democracy. So what are people who don’t want to see Saskatchewan become a nuclear dump to do? Are we to close our eyes to the realities facing Métis and First Nations communities in the north? Are we to sidestep the role that the lack of economic opportunities in the north is playing in the nuclear waste controversy? Are we to oppose a nuclear dump while ignoring the powerful influence and dangers of the uranium industry in the north?

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

It's not possible to do principled, effective educational work for a nuclear waste ban without reference to uranium mining. The two, after all, are inextricably connected; the yellowcake that goes out of northern mines, to be refined and converted into fuel-bundles by Cameco in Ontario, is then used in Candu reactors where it becomes spent fuel - the nuclear waste that the NWMO wants to dump in the north. By 2005 Canada had accumulated 40,000 tonnes of nuclear wastes from these uranium-fueled Candus. For every year supply of uranium for one nuclear plant another 2,500 tonnes of nuclear waste is created.

It is sometimes difficult to make these links because uranium mining remains "the elephant in the room”. And the “Uranium Curtain” which keeps us largely in the dark about uranium mining is thick and well funded. But last years’ success in stopping nuclear power plants along the North Saskatchewan River didn’t occur in a vacuum. The recommendation that we "go nuclear" actually came from the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP), as a way to add-value to the uranium industry. So did the recommendation that we take nuclear wastes. The Coalition to bring a non-nuclear, pro-renewable energy perspective to the UDP’s public consultations was always premised on creating alternatives to this expansion of the uranium industry. This holistic approach strengthened the understanding that lay behind the opposition to nuclear power and support of renewables in the face of such heavy-handed pro-nuclear promotion.

CORPORATE INTEGRATION

Bringing nuclear wastes here is a corporate strategy. Cameco, a uranium company, co-owns Bruce Power, a nuclear power company which buys uranium from its corporate partner. Bruce Power has accumulated 40% of the nuclear wastes in Canada and is a financial backer of the NWMO. The interlocked companies want to turn the nuclear waste stream into a lucrative business and they apparently favour northern Saskatchewan for this. The nuclear industry is fully integrated from uranium mining and refining to nuclear power and its wastes. Areva, the other main uranium company in the north, is involved in nuclear waste reprocessing at its La Hague plant in France. And we must remain wary of the dangers of a nuclear dump as a step towards reprocessing spent fuel for plutonium, and all the proliferation risks this would present.

The Ontario communities, Ignace and Ear Falls, recently had municipal elections that defeated politicians, who were dealing with the NWMO, and so Saskatchewan's north could become a more likely target for a nuclear dump. All the promotional disinformation about uranium mining’s benefits to indigenous people is being built upon to convince northern communities they should "host" a nuclear dump. And, as occurred with uranium mine expansion, there’s lots of monetary bribery undercutting informed consent (duty to consult). Meanwhile uranium mining has not altered the relative economic position of the north; it remains the second poorest region in Canada. The wealth goes out, a clear neo-colonial process. A similar thing would happen with an even more capital-intensive nuclear dump.

CONVERSION TO SUSTAINABILITY

Northern people working in uranium mines shouldn’t be criticized; they are just trying to make a living. But alternative employment must be proposed; after all “employment” is the carrot being used to promote a nuclear dump. People everywhere are exploring shutting down coal mines and plants due to global warming, and finding new lines of sustainable work. There is also a move to shut down Quebec asbestos mines because asbestos causes untold lung cancer deaths. The legacy of cancer-causing uranium mining, its radioactive tailings, the link to weapons, and the future burden from nuclear wastes, makes the nuclear industry much more devastating.

Even Sask Party Minister Boyd admits there’s not much grass-roots support for a nuclear waste dump here. The United Church is calling for a nuclear waste ban, and the NDP opposition is officially on record as opposing a nuclear dump. And the Coalition for Clean Green Saskatchewan is beginning a community-information campaign, along any prospective nuclear waste transportation routes, to support a nuclear waste ban. Support for such a ban will come from many people who don't yet know that much about the corporate connections along the nuclear fuel system. Understandably they just don’t want high-level radioactive wastes to come through their community on the way north. But a credible campaign won't be able to side-step these connections; otherwise it would end up looking like a Not-In-My-Back-Yard or NIMBY campaign, which it isn’t.

NOT A NIMBY CAMPAIGN

A NIMBY campaign could even backfire since the bulk of the uranium used in the Candus that create nuclear waste comes from here. The campaign therefore has to be linked to changing energy policy; “greening the grid” and phasing out nuclear power, which will greatly reduce the nuclear wastes burdening our future kin. And it must be clear that we are not obliged to take these wastes; the jurisdictions that build nuclear plants must be held responsible for their own wastes. Quebec presently bans importing nuclear wastes but, having its own nuclear power plants, it can’t really ban storage. Nor can Ontario, with a government that still flirts with expanding nuclear power without any waste plan! However, with no nuclear plants Manitoba can and does ban storing nuclear wastes. We will need a Saskatchewan ban on importing, transporting and storing of nuclear wastes.

Saskatchewan exported uranium for weapons until the end of the 1960s, and since then for nuclear plants that create the bulk of nuclear wastes. We have a legacy that makes work here for a non-nuclear society more complex and challenging. But there’s less room for double standards: e.g. we want uranium mines but not nuclear power plants; we’ll export uranium but don’t want to think about nuclear wastes, or the weapons connection, etc. Three times Saskatchewan people have stopped the nuclear lobby from building nuclear plants, while being upfront about the links. It’s also possible to win a nuclear waste ban while being upfront about them, and this will help build more support for a non-nuclear, renewable energy policy. We can't avoid our history and our complicity. Things are beginning to catch up with us and we must now, ever so carefully, take the bull by the horns.

Next time I’ll discuss why the Métis Council of Canada (MCC) and Assembly of First Nations (AFN) are also addressing the whole nuclear fuel system.

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

WHAT THE ASSEMBLY OF FIRST NATIONS SAYS ABOUT NUCLEAR WASTES

By Jim Harding For R-Town Newspapers, Dec. 10, 2010

There are many people across Saskatchewan that worry that a First Nations or Métis community will make a private deal with industry to create a nuclear dump in the province. This raises fundamental issues about protecting Aboriginal and Treaty Rights and Canada’s democracy. It’s therefore a good time to refresh our memories about what national Aboriginal groups have said about this matter. Here I will look at the Assembly of First Nations (AFN); however the Métis Council of Canada (MCC) has said similar things.

The AFN represents more than 630 First Nations across Canada, and 270 of them live in regions being considered for nuclear wastes. And the AFN has been engaged in the nuclear waste controversy from the start. It participated in the federal Seaborn Inquiry which in 1998 reported that Canadians did not support the Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) proposal for deep geological burial of nuclear wastes. About its involvement in this review the AFN said, “First Nations expressed concern that: they had not had the time to study the proposals; the proposals did not incorporate traditional ecological knowledge; the proposals strongly conflicted with their deeply held beliefs; and they doubted they would derive any significant benefit from agreeing to accept a nuclear waste facility in their territory. These concerns have not abated with time.”

The AFN also participated in Parliamentary hearings leading to the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, Bill C-27, in 2002. Then in 2004 the AFN initiated a First Nations-led dialogue to raise awareness and build capacity to address the matter of nuclear wastes. In Sept. 2005, after extensive cross-Canada consultations with First Nations, including across Saskatchewan, the AFN released its “Recommendations to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization”, or NWMO.

THE AFN ON THE NWMO

Right off the bat the AFN expressed concerns about the NWMO’s conflict of interest, saying “First Nations are not convinced that the NWMO is the most suitable organization to be conducting public dialogue or making recommendations to the Canadian government because they are comprised of nuclear energy producers.” The AFN was very concerned about the “industry’s apparent predilection for ‘remote areas’ for deep geological disposal”, saying that “Some First Nations expressed concern that their need for economic opportunities could be manipulated to facilitate an otherwise unwelcome decision.” This is the AFN’s words!

The AFN was also deeply concerned about the NWMO interfering in the relationship between First Nations and the Crown, saying “The NWMO is not an agent of the Crown and therefore cannot fulfill the Crown’s fiduciary obligations to First Nations”. The AFN was very clear that the dialogue conducted by NWMO “…has not fulfilled the federal government’s obligation to consult…”

THE NUCLEAR FUEL SYSTEM

The AFN reported that “First Nations are deeply concerned about the state of our environment. Our Elders advise us that we should think of the impact of our actions seven generations hence. Nowhere is this truer than with respect to the creation and disposal of nuclear waste. The production of energy from nuclear sources is fraught with peril. Disposal of the waste can have unforeseen and potentially dangerous impacts far into the future even if managed with the utmost care and caution.”

The AFN was not happy with the NWMO’s narrow approach, and said “First Nations are seeking a review of the entire nuclear industry chain, from mining uranium to nuclear energy development and the disposal of low, intermediate and high level waste.” The AFN was clear that “From a First Nations’ perspective the environment must be considered holistically, as opposed to segregating parts of it into dispensable units that are somehow unconnected to the rest of the environment. In this regard, First Nations were reluctant to confine their considerations to the issue of nuclear waste disposal, but wish to discuss all issues related to nuclear development, from mining, to energy policy, to nuclear armaments.” The AFN went on to call for “independent First Nations research on the effects of nuclear development…the entire nuclear energy chain, not just waste management.” A main recommendation was to examine “all aspects of the nuclear chain, including low and intermediate waste, and provide a clear understanding of the impacts the whole nuclear process has on First Nations quality of life.”

TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE

The AFN reported that “The Elders are concerned about the future based on their traditional knowledge, the youth are concerned with living with the legacy of nuclear waste disposal, and women are concerned about protecting the water for all people and the environment as this is their traditional role.” The AFN also took issue with the way the NWMO tried to appropriate traditional knowledge, saying “To cite with favor the seven generations teachings while at the same time promoting nuclear energy is inconsistent at best and at worst denigrates and belittles the value of Traditional Knowledge and the First Nations’ cultures, beliefs and spiritual understandings.”

The AFN had no qualms about stressing “the need for more renewable energy and intensive energy conservation”, and recommended “resources to assist First Nations to develop renewable sources of energy to serve their communities.” The AFN also reported that “First Nations have expressed a great deal of concern over the transportation of nuclear fuel waste.” The AFN continued, “First Nations are concerned that a decision made by their neighbouring communities to volunteer to host a waste management facility could have a detrimental impact on their Aboriginal and Treaty rights”. It continued, “Conversely, a decision by a First Nation to host a facility would have to consider the impacts on their non-Aboriginal neighbours.”

SUPPORTS NATIONAL BAN

The AFN was also concerned that the NWMO’s focus on what it called “remote areas”, where indigenous people live, could make Canada attractive as “an international repository for nuclear fuel waste”, and recommended that Canada “pass legislation specifically banning the importation of nuclear waste.” I have never seen this AFN call for a national ban mentioned in Saskatchewan’s mainstream media.

The AFN ended its report: “One of the most fundamental teachings of First Nations is the obligation to care for the earth. It is a firmly held belief by First Nations that they are entitled to be sustained and to prosper from the lands and resources given to them by the Creator, but that they also hold sacred responsibilities to care for the earth in a responsive manner. First Nations continually expressed concern about the impact of the nuclear industry on the land and all people. Our greatest concern is to ensure the long term sustainability of the land, as it is our deep and abiding connection to the land that holds our future.”

Could anything so fundamental have changed since the AFN issued this report five years ago? Be assured that there are many non-First Nations, settler people throughout Saskatchewan willing to work for the same ends. Getting a ban on nuclear wastes coming into Saskatchewan is a challenge for us all to work together to protect the future.

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

THE CHALLENGES OF ACHIEVING A NUCLEAR WASTE BAN

BY Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News on February 18, 2011

I don’t believe it would be good for Saskatchewan to “host” a nuclear waste dump. And there are indications that most Saskatchewan people feel the same way. Past polls have shown widespread opposition to bringing nuclear wastes here, and 80% of those participating in the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) consultations in 2009 opposed a nuclear dump. But we know that popular democracy doesn’t necessarily win out in these David and Goliath conflicts. So what are the main challenges those wanting a nuclear waste ban will face?

In early February I was asked to speak on a nuclear waste ban at community forums in Saskatoon, Prince Albert and La Ronge. It was no surprise that fifty people came out in La Ronge and that Prince Albert had an even larger meeting than Saskatoon. It would take 18,000 truckloads to move existing and future radioactive high-level wastes (mainly from Ontario) to a northern Saskatchewan dump, and these would all be going nearby Prince Albert and La Ronge, day in and day out, for decades.

I wanted to present information that the broad public will not be getting from the industry’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). Most people for example have no idea about the magnitude of the transportation that would be required to move 3.6 million fuel bundles across Canada. If people only hear the well-financed, one-sided industry view, there is no possibility of informed consent. And we know industry can be quite skilled at end-running democracy. I also wanted to listen and learn, and I heard a lot of passionate views, especially about the dilemmas facing northern communities. After this trip I am much clearer about what those wanting a nuclear waste ban are up against.

HIDING BEHIND GEOLOGY

The industry argues that caverns dug deep in the Canadian Shield is the safest way to store and ultimately dispose of nuclear wastes. It has been pushing this position since the late 1970s, when AECL, which makes the Candu reactors that create nuclear wastes, started to promote it. The Canadian Shield covers most of Canada, from northern Saskatchewan to the Maritimes, and nuclear wastes are mostly produced in southern Ontario, which is in the Canadian Shield. So why is the NWMO even here? We don’t have nuclear plants, and each time government or industry tries to float a nuclear power plant here, like Bruce Power’s proposal to build two reactors on the North Saskatchewan River, the projects get rejected for a combination of good economic and ecological reasons.

The only reason the nuclear industry is targeting Saskatchewan is because the idea of a nuclear dump has already been rejected elsewhere. AECL found no takers in Ontario in the late 1970s and Manitoba passed a nuclear waste ban in 1987. The NWMO’s recent negotiations with town councils in Ear Falls and Ignace, Ontario, got kiboshed when local people threw the mayors and councils out in the 2010 fall elections. And Quebec has a regulation banning importation of nuclear wastes from other provinces.

The industry doesn’t want us to know that the Seaborn inquiry from 1991-98 concluded Canadians did not support geological disposal. Those who see personal-business benefits from having a nuclear dump in northern Saskatchewan argue that since the Canadian Shield here has been stable for so long, it is a safe place to put these wastes. This can sound convincing. But geology is not a predictive science. While knowledge about past geology can provide some foresight about possible future events, it can’t predict them or their timelines. And common sense gets sacrificed in the industry’s promotions. The presumed stability of the rock formation would itself be compromised by the proposed massive drilling and excavation project. The movement of underground water would alter dramatically. The long-term heat and constantly changing, and not necessarily reducing, radioactivity in the nuclear wastes could further compromise the rock. The way the industry promotes its case is a bit like how the pharmaceutical industry downplays adverse side-effects while promoting its lucrative products. The adverse effects of a nuclear dump would however linger forever.

NUCLEAR SPIN-DOCTORS

It is foolish to downplay the role that self-interest plays in these promotions. Who would most benefit from such a massive excavation project? The NWMO throws around figures like $24 billon to leave the impression that there would be an explosion of opportunities in places like the Métis community of Pinehouse or the First Nations one at English River/Patunak. Yet few jobs would actually be created on-site and there would be considerable risk to the jobs in the local land-based economy? Most of the economic benefits of such a capital-intensive project would involve the production and transport of the thousands of nuclear waste canisters, the drilling and heavy equipment companies, and geological and engineering consultants. And lots of this talk about benefits remains spin, for the NWMO only has a few billon dollars in the bank.

The NWMO’s campaign is being run at the level of perception, not hard or comparative economics. When full-costing is done, this mega-project looks more and more absurd. However, economic spin can work and those who favour a nuclear waste ban will have to directly challenge this spin and support northerners in their quest for sustainable alternatives.

INCREMENTAL EXPANSION

The nuclear industry’s incremental expansion presents an even more difficult challenge. Even though the impacts come from the whole nuclear fuel system, from uranium mining and refining to nuclear plants, it is never assessed as a whole. The cumulative effects get ignored.

Thankfully the broader public is catching on. In late 2010 seventy municipalities and First Nations along the Great Lakes opposed Bruce Power shipping radioactive boilers from its Ontario nuclear reactors to Sweden. Even though the regulatory body, the CNSC, predictably approved Bruce Power’s plan, opposition remains strong. There is great concern that this plan will set a precedent for transporting nuclear wastes, and more people are becoming aware of the dangers of transporting high-level radioactive wastes across Canada en route to a nuclear dump in Saskatchewan’s north.

The industry downplays this bigger picture. Short-term benefits are targeted at economically-vulnerable communities, which is why the NWMO is shopping around Saskatchewan’s north. An objective, retroactive analysis is helpful. For example, uranium mine expansion in the late 1970s was promoted as bringing unprecedented economic benefits to northerners. Yet after the expansion of the uranium industry over three decades, northern Saskatchewan remains in the same position, as Canada’s second poorest region. The main legacy of uranium mining will be long-term radioactive tailings.

THINKING AHEAD

To win a nuclear waste ban we’ll have to learn from the past and better think ahead. The motive for the industry creating a central storage area has always included retrieving nuclear wastes to get plutonium. If a northern community agreed to host Ontario’s nuclear wastes, then the north would become the only realistic site for a nuclear waste reprocessing plant. Reprocessing is banned in the U.S. and elsewhere because it is extremely costly, involves extensive radioactive contamination and increases the risk of weapons proliferation. If a nuclear dump is created here, the north would be well on its way to becoming the nuclear waste industrial corridor for Canada and perhaps even for the U.S., which has no viable nuclear waste plan. Is that what we want for northern Saskatchewan?

Next time I’ll look at the role colonial mentality is playing in the nuclear waste controversy.

Other columns at:

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

WHAT DOES JAPAN’S TRIPLE DISASTER TELL US ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY?

BY Jim Harding

Published in R-Town News on March 15, 2011

My heart goes out to the Japanese people. The March 11, 2011 earthquake was the largest in its recorded history; the fifth biggest globally in a century. The resulting tsunami swept whole settlements away as it surged inland, sometimes as far as a km. As though bad things do come in three, there then came the threat of a core meltdown at some of Japan’s nuclear plants. The Prime Minister said it was Japan’s worst catastrophe since WW II, which we should remember ended with two Atom bombs being dropped on the country.

Those standing in shock on the flatlands of debris where villages once stood might have had flashes of Hiroshima or Nagasaki being leveled in 1945. Today’s radiation threat, however, didn’t come from nuclear bombs, but through a series of interlocking disasters. The earthquake, measuring 9, cut power off at the Fukushima nuclear complex. The pumps keeping water going over the reactor core shut down, and the extremely hot fuel was exposed; threatening a core melt-down and trans-continental radiation release such as happened at Chernobyl. Officials thought that they had diesel generators as a back-up, but these were damaged by the tsunami.

A building exploded from the build-up of hydrogen gas at reactor # 1. To stop things getting totally out of control the decision was made to pump sea-water to try to cool the core. This was a desperate measure, because it pretty much trashes the reactors for future use. Two days later another explosion occurred at reactor # 3.

It’s lucky the nuclear complex was near the ocean; otherwise the reactors might have immediately gone into full meltdown. As I write, Fukushima reactor # 2 is also malfunctioning and a full meltdown is not ruled out, and a state of emergency has been declared at another nuclear plant at Onagawa. And we learn from Beyond Nuclear that nuclear wastes containing lots of plutonium may have been stored on top of one of the reactors where an explosion occurred.

NUCLEAR UNKNOWNS

It is this complexity of dangerous unknowns that makes nuclear power so contentious. By looking at the combination of natural and technological disasters we can learn much about how to get serious about human sustainability.

For a while there seemed to be a complete breakdown of communication. While being interviewed by the BBC, a respected nuclear expert, Walter Patterson, asked the Japanese government’s spokesperson whether the control room was still operating and providing reliable information about what’s happening in the core. The spokesperson said he didn’t know. Later it was reported that there was a partial core meltdown, later it was reported that the reactor temperatures weren’t dropping as they should, since starting to pump sea-water. Though officials didn’t want to create panic, they clearly know the risk is great, for 200,000 people were evacuated from a 25 km zone around the Fukushima plants. And there have been reports that iodine pills are being distributed.

ORIGINS OF CRISIS

The Island of Japan was created by earthquakes and the building of nuclear plants there has been contentious for decades. A seismologist has now gone public saying that he advised authorities to not allow nuclear plants on Japan’s geological faults. But nuclear industry “experts” continued to argue that their reactors are among the best designed on the planet. Apparently that wasn’t good enough!

The nuclear industry continues to promote itself as the alternative to fossil fuels which create greenhouses gases and climate change. Japan is the country where this scenario has already been tested. With its high-energy industrial economy, Japan used to depend on importing foreign oil. When the oil crisis occurred in the mid-1970s Japan decided to enhance its energy security by quickly expanding its nuclear fleet. Now nuclear power is Japan’s greatest single source of electricity (33%), with natural gas and coal not far behind. After the US and France, Japan has the highest production of nuclear power anywhere.

People are now asking why Japan didn’t explore renewable energy, such as geo-thermal electrical plants, run by the plentiful volcanic steam in the earthquake-prone region. Such technology wouldn’t have posed the threat of a radioactive meltdown, or produced long-lived toxic nuclear wastes. Storing these wastes in Japan’s earthquake-prone region will present challenges long after the nuclear plants close.

With greater promotional money and government connections, the nuclear lobby won out. However, there is no energy security in the aftermath of this triple-Japanese disaster. There will now be rolling power outages across Japan, similar to those after the bombing of Iraq.

NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS

If no full meltdown occurs, the nuclear industry will say this shows that nuclear power plants can withstand this magnitude of a natural disaster. If a meltdown occurs they’ll say they can’t be expected to plan for such an unprecedented natural disaster, but will factor this all into their future designs. We can’t afford to learn about the risks of nuclear power one catastrophic accident at a time. Sustainability requires us to change our technology so that there isn’t this magnitude of risk for future populations. Unbeknown to many, worldwide electrical production from renewable energy surpassed that from nuclear power in 2005, and nuclear plant phase-outs are the way to go.

There have been many nuclear accidents over the years. Three meltdowns however stand out. The first occurred in 1957 at the Sellafield, English plant used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. The US’s Three Mile Island power plant had a meltdown in 1979. The worst nuclear accident ever occurred at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986. A 7-point scale has been used to rate the severity of these accidents: as of March 15th the Japanese nuclear accident gets a “6”, Three Mile Island got a “5”, and Chernobyl got a “7”. We are approaching the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, on April 25th, and vigils will be held worldwide at 4:10 pm, when the catastrophe started.

NUCLEAR PLANT ‘BOMBS’

This Japanese accident may come as no surprise to those studying the probability of major nuclear accidents; experience shows they occur about once every 15-20 years. If the number of nuclear plants increases, the probability will increase. Speaking in 1977 to the IAEA, renowned nuclear proponent, Alvin Weinberg said, if we succeed in building enough nuclear reactors “…to make any noticeable dent in the world’s use of petroleum, we can expect to have a core meltdown approximately every 4 years. The lesson is clear. We must stop building these reactors near large cities.” I suggest we just stop building them!

Understandably the Japanese are reminded of the devastation left by the A-bombing of their country. While today’s radioactive threat occurred as a result of an earthquake, tsunami and failed nuclear safety system, Japanese will be experiencing the fear that came with nuclear bombs. And their instincts are correct, for the meltdown of a reactor core can release equal or greater amounts of deadly radiation across vast human populations as would come from a nuclear weapons blast.

The Japanese nuclear accident once again shows there really isn’t a “peaceful atom”, and that whether we continue building nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants we are playing with a different kind of fire. We will get much more peace and security, including energy security and psychological security, by quickly moving our energy system on to a sustainable path.

I won’t have a column next week.

Other columns at:

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

HOW IS SASKATCHEWAN INVOLVED WITH JAPAN’S NUCLEAR DISASTER?

BY Jim Harding

THE SASKATCHEWAN CONNECTION

Published in R-Town News on April 1, 2011

The Fukushima’s nuclear reactors which are steadily contaminating Japan’s atmosphere, seashore, watersheds, food chains and making millions of Japanese into nuclear refugees are owned and operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. or Tepco. Tepco has Saskatchewan connections. The Globe and Mail describes Tepco as “one of (Cameco’s) largest customers for uranium used to fuel nuclear power plants”, and there is little doubt that much of the radioactive contamination threatening Japan comes from uranium fuel mined in northern Saskatchewan. And Tepco is directly involved in this mining; since the 1990s it has been Cameco’s partner in the massive Cigar Lake mine, which has itself had serious “accidents” and is years behind its production schedule due to recurring underground flooding.

Cameco has taken a big hit since the nuclear disaster started at Tepco’s plants; its share value has dropped 20% and the demand for uranium could markedly fall as more countries become wary of nuclear power. Still, Cameco’s CEO Jerry Grandey isn’t sounding bitter, though he admitted to the Globe and Mail that Japan is “not living up to our standards of transparency”. Grandey himself may not want “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” to come out; he flippantly states that “in the long term all of this will demonstrate the strength of the industry”, a cavalier attitude in the face of such devastation.

SKETCHY FACE-SAVING

While there have been periods of media blackout about the Fukushima reactors and the industry continues to try to normalize the disaster, things continue to spin more out of control since the disaster started three weeks ago. The New York Times is now reporting the disaster as “the worst atomic crisis in 25 years”, second only to Chernobyl in 1986, but information coming out of Japan remains sketchy. The 19 million people residing in Tokyo are told not to worry, even though the Fukushima reactors at risk of melt-down are only 150 miles away, the distance from Regina’s Legislative Buildings to Premier Brad Walls’ Swift Current riding. Meanwhile radioactive particles from Japan are being “found as far away as Iceland” and over Newfoundland. And though Tokyo residents are being told to “sit tight”, at one point mothers were told to not give their infants tap water. There was an immediate run on bottled water which some are also using for cooking.

The nuclear disaster was initially correctly reported as a global nuclear disaster. Then its profile receded, and enforcing the “no fly zone” over Libya gained the camera’s attention. But every day or two something more slips out. Tepco and government authorities try in vain to normalize the disaster, as though things are coming under control, but this has more to do with Japanese face-saving than scientific honesty. In a recent CBC radio interview the Japanese ambassador to Canada refused to respond to any questions about radioactivity and risk. When it was pointed out that the evacuation zone for Japanese was only 25 KM whereas the US had already pulled its nationals back 80 KM from Fukushima, he simply responded that America is a democracy and has a right to do as it decides.

Tepco officials are clearly scrambling to avert a full melt down. Ten days after the first hydrogen explosions that destroyed the containment buildings the company still hadn’t hooked electricity back up to their six reactors. (Meanwhile it was reported that an offshore wind farm survived the earthquake and continued to produce electricity after the tsunami.) With no power to pump water to cool the core (or the overheating spent fuel bundles stored outside four reactors), Tepco officials have regularly vented radioactive gases into the air to avert a core explosion and possible meltdown. Tepco brought in helicopters which desperately dropped sea water onto the reactors, often missing the targets altogether. Then fire trucks were brought in to spray seawater onto the reactors, in what seemed another futile though symbolically heroic gesture.

CONTAMINATION SPREADING

And then, not surprisingly, the other shoe fell and it was reported that milk had 27 times the acceptable radioactivity and that vegetables had 17 times the allowable. And then, as if it wasn’t expected, that the sea water offshore from the reactors had radioactivity more than 1,000 times the normal. This continues to rise; it’s now up to 4,000 times.

A full two weeks into the disaster Japan’s Prime Minister admitted that the situation was still “grave and serious” and that we “can’t be optimistic”. But even this was a face-saving understatement, as the water coming from reactor # 3 was soon to be 10,000 times as radioactive as permissible. The fuel in this reactor was what’s called MOX fuel, which is a mixture of plutonium and uranium. Then we heard that another 10,000 people were being relocated as the evacuation zone was enlarged by 10 KM. The next day a government spokesman said things were still “very unpredictable” as they’d found that water from reactor # 1 was also 10,000 times more radioactive than allowable.

Nearly three weeks into the disaster Tepco clearly isn’t able to control what’s happening at their crippled reactors. Even more radioactivity is getting outside reactor # 2 and it is near certain its containment has been breached. Workers are reported fumbling around in the dark trying to hook up electrical cables while standing in highly radioactive water, with only plastic bags tied around their shoes; such is nuclear energy in the trenches. In late March Tepco officials apologized for erroneously reporting that water leaking from reactor # 2 was 10,000,000 times the norm. They later reported the more correct figure was 100,000 times the radioactivity, which remains a seriously dangerous level. The Washington Post just reported that this amounts to 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) per hour, an exposure that would give a worker a yearly dose in just 15 minutes, and will most certainly be life-threatening to Tepco workers.

All of the radioactive elements being spewed into the environment present health hazards to present and future generations. It is interesting that most reporting has been on the fairly short-lived Iodine 131. But what of radioactive Caesium 137, which will contaminate farmland for 400 years; or the more long-lived carcinogens that are most certainly being released, including Plutonium 239, which is toxic for 500,000 years? Plutonium is now contaminating the land and sea around Tepco’s reactors.

BACK TO SASKATCHEWAN

Ignorance, confusion and misinformation aren’t a sound way to deal with a catastrophic nuclear accident. When you see the twisted buildings left from earlier explosions and realize that there are no control rooms operating to reliably monitor what’s actually happening in the reactors, you get more compassionate for those making the face-saving statements and those sacrificing their health. Trauma as well as radioactivity will take its toll on the Japanese.

Prior to this accident Japan was considering expanding its nuclear power “arsenal” so that its nuclear-generated electricity would go from today’s 30% to 50% of the total by 2030. This won’t happen after Fukushima, and Cameco won’t be able to count on an enlarged uranium market from this contaminated country. Japan already has 55 nuclear plants squeezed onto its small, earthquake prone island and there’s no safe place to put its nuclear wastes.

And this brings us back to Saskatchewan, which is being targeted for a nuclear waste dump. Cameco is on record as supporting taking nuclear wastes back from countries that buy its uranium. Like Japan! When Saskatchewan’s Cigar Lake mine flooded, co-owner Tepco provided pumping technology to help Cameco deal with the problem. Well, their pumps have clearly now faced their Alamo. And what might Cameco now do to help its corporate partner Tepco? What might be Cameco’s quid-pro-quo? What about investing in renewable energy and leaving the toxic uranium in the ground?

Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. Other writings on sustainability, nuclear, renewable, etc. at: http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

HEALTH AND TRUST: Hard Lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima

https://sites.google.com/site/cleangreensaskca/Home/
jim-harding-s-column/health-and-trust-hard-lessons-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima

by Jim Harding, Originally published in RTown News, April 15, 2011

Health has barely made it into the federal election. But it and the related issue of “trust” are at the top of our concerns. There’s been some talk about increasing healthcare costs -- but nothing about protecting environmental and human health.

As we approach Chernobyl’s 25th anniversary (the melt-down occurred April 26, 1986), the nuclear disaster continues at Fukushima. As with Chernobyl, various “experts” continue to reassure us that the radioactivity isn’t a threat to our health. We knew otherwise before Fukushima. In 2010, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences.

It was written by three internationally-noted scientists - a biologist, ecologist and physicist -- who reviewed 5,000 scientific reports and concluded that between 1986 and 2004 there were 985,000 people who died, mostly of cancer, as a result of Chernobyl.

CHERNOBYL FALLOUT

Chernobyl had a global reach. Ten percent of the poisons fell on Asia, including northwest Japan, now being poisoned again. Five percent fell on North Africa; plutonium was even found in Nile River sediments. At least one percent made it to North America, largely due to the explosion of reactor # 4 which sent a radioactive cloud 10 km upwards. There was
significant irradiation of Arctic plants and animals.

But the hardest hit regions were Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. Cancer mortality increased 40% in Belarus. The radioactive poisons causing the devastation included Cesium 137, Plutonium 239, Iodine 131, Strontium 90 and their decay-products. Because some of the poisons have half-lives ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 years, their concentrations “will remain practically the same virtually forever”.

The number hospitalized for acute radiation sickness turned out to be more than 100 times the IAEA estimate. Children in particular were affected; in the most contaminated areas the percentage of children who were healthy dropped from 80% to 20%. And not only humans were affected; plant mutations increased sharply. Increased tumors, immune disorders and shortened life expectancy occurred in animals. Survival rates of barn swallows in the most contaminated areas have been “close to zero”; those that hatched had ghastly abnormalities such as two heads. But we no longer have to look to birds (the canary in the mine) as an early warning system. After Chernobyl children have become “our canaries”.

The scientists concluded that Chernobyl “was the worst technogenic accident in history”. They condemned “the nuclear industry’s willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with nuclear power plants”, noting these “will result, not only theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear weapons.”

HALF-TRUTHS ABOUT JAPAN

We now face half-truths or outright lies about Fukushima, which could still turn out to be worse than Chernobyl. After a month we know that three nuclear reactors and four spent fuel storage areas are still at risk. A cement crack near reactor # 2 recently allowed nearly 3 million gallons of highly radioactive water to leak into the ocean, where fish are now
contaminated. One hundred and sixty-five Japanese groups are rightly calling for an expansion of the evacuation zone around Fukushima. On April 12th authorities finally rated Fukushima a “7”, equivalent to Chernobyl as a “major accident”. While they claim that radioactive releases are, so far, one-tenth that of Chernobyl, they admit they still don’t know how to stop the radioactivity and it could take up to 30 years at a cost of $10 billion to decommission the dismantled reactors. The Fukushima site will remain radioactive for thousands of years.

But we continue to be told that the radiation is too low to affect our health. Ignorance abounds! Thankfully on March 29th the Scientific Secretary of the European Commission on Radiation Risk, Dr. Chris Busby, weighed into the debate. He notes that one reassuring British “nuclear expert” was a past employee of Nuclear Fuels. Another turned out to be a psychologist, not a radiation scientist. And then there’s George Monbiot, who, claiming no one had yet died from radiation sickness, has embraced nuclear power because of fears that Fukushima will lead to a return to coal plants.

Busby correctly points out that all these pseudo-experts fail to distinguish between external radiation and internal radioactivity. Once you experience external radiation, it’s over, though it may affect you, depending on the dose, over time. However if you ingest radioactive
particles, such as those released when a reactor’s containment system is breached, or when there is a melt-down, they can endlessly irradiate your DNA.

CANCER RESEARCH

Epidemiological studies (e.g. by Steve Wing) show the greater incidence of cancer from the Three-Mile partial melt-down in 1979, and, as Busby says, “…court cases are regularly settled on the basis of cancers” from this. Busby notes that Swedish research (by Martin Tondel) found a direct link between the level of contamination from Chernobyl and increased cancer: an 11% increase for every 100 kBq per square metre of contamination. (kBq or kilobecquerel means 1,000 nuclear decays per second). He notes that the IAEA already estimates that the contamination rates from Fukushima are from 2 to 9 times this (i.e. 200 to 900 kBq/sq metre) “out to 78 km from the site”. This means cancer rates could
increase between 22% and 99%. This 78 km radius around Fukushima is about 7 times greater than the area known as the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which is defined as “555 kBq/sq metre and above”.

The “nuclear experts” interviewed by the mainstream media accept a mathematical risk model long discredited by empirical research. It is based on “absorbed dose”, which is an average, and greatly underestimates internal radioactive exposure. As Busby says, it “would
not distinguish between warming yourself in front of a fire and eating a red hot coal”. Yet it’s the internal radioactive particulates that are the most dangerous because their ongoing dose can go to a single cell and it is this “that causes the genetic damage and ultimate cancer.”

NUCLEAR SECRECY

Why can’t we trust the “nuclear experts”? It goes right back to the beginning of the military-industrial nuclear system. In 1959, when the superpowers were still testing H-Bombs, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) signed an agreement to allow the pro-nuclear
regulator, the IAEA, to approve any research on radiation. Ever since it has hidden behind erroneous risk estimates which, as Busby points out, are “based entirely on external acute high dose radiation from Hiroshima”. The March 16, 2011 The Independent, notes the nuclear industry from its start “has taken secrecy to be its watchword”. History’s biggest secret ever was the Manhattan Project which built the first A-Bomb. The UK had the first catastrophic nuclear accident at Windscale in 1957; the official report on this was kept confidential until 1988. Numerous nuclear mishaps at the US weapons plant at Rocky Flats were kept secret for over four decades. The Soviet Union kept secret three major nuclear accidents at its weapons plant in the Urals, and tried to keep Chernobyl secret until scientists discovered the radioactive plume over Sweden.

This has all happened here too. That uranium mined around Uranium City in the 1950s was going into US nuclear weapons was kept secret from us until the late 1970s, and this is still not widely known or reported in the daily press. Tepco, the Fukushima operator and a major customer and partner of Cameco, has a litany of cover-ups. In 2002 its senior executives resigned for covering up “a large series of cracks and other damage to reactors”. In 2006 Tepco admitted “it has been falsifying data about coolant materials in its plants.” Tepco has regularly misreported levels of radioactivity at Fukushima.

Those who spout falsehoods about the safety of the nuclear industry perhaps should be held criminally responsible for the devastation that they try to cover-up. To re-earn the public trust, politicians and authorities must start telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth about radioactivity and health. This didn’t happen after Chernobyl and it isn’t happening about Fukushima.

[Oscar]

PETITION FOR NUCLEAR WASTE BAN PRESENTED TO PREMIER WALL

BY Jim Harding April 21, 2011

On April 14th a petition calling for a legislated ban on nuclear wastes was presented to Premier Wall’s government. The 4,800 names were collected after Bruce Power announced its proposal to build nuclear power plants along the North Saskatchewan River. Representatives from several member groups of the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan attended in support. This included RPIC (Renewable Energy the Intelligent Choice) and Council of Canadians from Prince Albert, the Fort Qu’Appelle ecumenical group KAIROS and ‘Clean Greens’ from Regina and Saskatoon.

Pat Atkinson, MLA from Saskatoon, agreed to present the Coalition’s petition to the Legislature. Karen Pederson of the North Saskatchewan River Environmental Society which initiated the petition in Cutknife, and Heidi Hougham of Save Our Saskatchewan (SOS), Lloydminster, spoke to the media on behalf of those who signed the petition.

Premier Wall’s government ended up rejecting Bruce Power’s proposal. However the industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) continues to negotiate with northern communities for a site for high-level nuclear wastes, mostly from southern Ontario. It’s estimated that it would take 18,000 truck loads to haul wastes accumulating at nuclear power plants in eastern Canada. Due to the nuclear decay process these wastes become even more radioactive after 100,000 years.

When asked about the petition Premier Wall admitted that there was ‘negative public opinion about a nuclear waste facility.’ He added ‘I don’t sense the mood of the province has changed, and frankly, what happening in Japan has got people thinking, just generally speaking about the issue.’. (Regina Leader Post, April 15, 2011, A3
http://www.leaderpost.com/news/
Petition+seen+further+evidence+nuclear+waste+facility+wanted/4620463/story.html.

THE JAPANESE CONNECTION

It certainly has, and many people are now realizing how directly involved the uranium industry here is with Japan’s nuclear disaster. TEPCO, the company operating the Fukushima reactors that continue to spew radioactive contamination, gets much of its uranium from Cameco, with which it has a joint-venture at the Cigar Lake mine. What this means is that much of the dangerously radioactive particles, which will most certainly increase cancer rates, are coming from uranium fuel from northern Saskatchewan. Russian, Belarus and Ukrainian Academy of Science researchers have concluded that Chernobyl led to nearly one million deaths between 1986 and 2004, mostly from cancer.

Cameco’s partner, TEPCO, had a history of covering up reactor safety problems and falsifying data prior to Japan’s March 11th earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. But, unlike the rest of us, Cameco head Jerry Grandey, is not rethinking the nuclear industry. At an April 14th Saskatoon luncheon he tried to downplay the severity of the Fukushima disaster, now ranked with Chernobyl, by saying no one had died at TEPCO’S nuclear plants. This shows ignorance and/or deception about the long-term risks to human health that will inevitably come from the contamination. When asked by the Star Phoenix reporter what he thought of the petition calling for a Saskatchewan ban on nuclear wastes, Grandey replied ‘it’s a good thing that some provincial communities want to study the idea of nuclear waste storage, which he called a ‘tremendous opportunity’’. It’s no surprise that Cameco continues to support Saskatchewan taking high-level nuclear wastes from Ontario, for it co-owns Ontario’s Bruce Power reactor complex which has accumulated more
than 40% of Canada’s nuclear wastes.

One way the nuclear industry has maintained support in Ontario is by telling the public it will someday take the high-level wastes far away. For Cameco, Bruce Power and the NWMO, that place apparently is Saskatchewan.

WHAT NOW?

The Saskatchewan NDP is now on record as opposing a nuclear dump anywhere in Saskatchewan. According to the April 15th Leader Post, Premier Wall has said his government ‘would not rule out such a law on nuclear waste in Saskatchewan.’ The Saskatoon Star Phoenix article even headlined its story on the Coalition’s petition: ‘No nuclear waste storage facility for Saskatchewan: Wall’. Neither party, however, has yet come out against the NWMO shopping around the north, looking for a community that will ‘host’ a nuclear dump in return for some of the jobs involved. This would be a high price to pay for employment. And, as Premier Wall himself says ‘This would be very much a provincial issue’ there should be a sense that the province in general is supportive ‘and I don’t have that sense.’

So why isn't Wall’s government, with NDP support, acting proactively to protect our environmental and human health? Why aren’t they joining hands to pass a legislative ban on the importation, transportation and storage of high-level nuclear waste? Manitoba banned nuclear wastes back in 1987 and in 2008 Quebec banned importing wastes from other provinces. Recently New Brunswick’s Premier said they wouldn’t consider becoming a nuclear dump.

That leaves Ontario, where most the wastes are produced, and Saskatchewan.

It’s time we joined the list of provinces explicitly saying they won’t take Ontario’s nuclear wastes.

AN ELECTION ISSUE

Saskatchewan residents living along the prospective transportation route -the Trans-Canada, Yellowhead and through the Prince Albert area into the north might want to ask their candidates for the May 2nd federal election whether they oppose a nuclear dump in Saskatchewan. The Harper government is on record as supporting the NWMO’s strategy of creating a centralized storage area to allow plutonium to be recovered for future nuclear plants.

How many Conservative MPs here have been transparent about this? Is this another example of how they try to displace our attention from what they are actually up to?

Awareness that we are at the top-of-the-list for a nuclear dump will hopefully grow as we approach the fall provincial election. People across the province might want to start asking their local MLAs and candidates for the fall election what their view is on bringing Ontario’s nuclear wastes to Saskatchewan. Perhaps the Coalition that brought this matter to the fore, and presented the petition to the Wall government on April 14th, could keep an inventory of the views of all Sask Party and NDP MLAs and all nominated candidates, and make this available to the voting public.

If we want to resurrect democracy and move towards a sustainable society, it is becoming abundantly clear that organizations outside the political party system are going to have to take more of a lead. The petition from the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan is an important step in that direction.
- - - - -
Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies. Other writings on sustainability, nuclear, renewable, etc. at: http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

CAN WE VOTE FOR SUSTAINABILITY ON MAY 2nd?

BY Jim Harding

Published in R-Towns News - April 29, 2011

If you’re like me you’ll have some disquiet about the outcome of the May 2nd federal election. Vital environmental matters weren’t included in the Leaders debates or the campaign. Yet the economy, our health and family wellbeing all depend on ecological sustainability. Whether from a more religious or scientific perspective, protecting the biosphere trumps all else.

FATHER FIGURE POLITICS

Meanwhile Harper, the leader least concerned about the environment, tries to get a majority by selling himself as Canada’s father figure. We’ve seen this ploy before in history, always with disastrous consequences. I don’t know about you but I don’t need a father figure; I had a good father who I loved dearly and who taught me a lot by example. Harper isn't even a convincing father figure; he never takes direct responsibility for his actions, always diverting or blaming someone else. When he’s confronted with his own accountability he displaces into abstract talk, telling Canadians what we need. He wears his Vancouver Olympic jacket with “Canada” on the front and stands with signs behind him saying “Here for Canada”, as though he embodies Canada and Canadians. He doesn’t!

His appeal for a majority government led by a strong (i.e. bullying) leader is a ploy to try to get a majority of seats with minority support. Harper paints all other parties as a threat to our stability, which is a fundamentally undemocratic message. We know that fear is a powerful human emotion, and Harper is banking on it. Will this work?

WILL FEAR WORK?

The answer is “hopefully not”. Harper’s support has remained flat since the campaign began. His base of one-third of decided voters (about one in four eligible voters) has not enlarged. The only major shift in party preference seems to be from the Bloc to the Quebec NDP and to a lesser degree from the Liberals and Greens to the NDP elsewhere. This doesn’t indicate strategic voting, as the Liberals, still running second, would then drain votes from the NDP and Greens. It may suggest that Ignatieff isn’t resonating with the electorate, in contrast to Layton’s bread-and-butter campaign.

One week before voting the Conservatives had 38% support, the Liberals 27% and the NDP were closing in with 24%. Remember these are decided voters; and last time 4 out of 10 did not vote. While Harper had the largest chunk of support, he didn’t have a majority of decided voters. If you add the Liberal, NDP and Green support you do get a clear majority, of 55%. But the first-past-the-post system doesn’t work that way. Harper is approaching this election as though the “winner must take all”. It’s a majority for him or chaos for the country; not a message that enhances respect for the right to vote according to conscience.

MAKING CHOICES

If I was in Regina I’d vote for Ralph Goodale, as he’s done more to keep us aware of Harper’s actions than all 13 Saskatchewan Conservative MPs combined. If I were on Vancouver Island I’d vote for Elizabeth May. I am not naïve about the Green Party, which suffers from its own top-down politics. Since the 2004 policy, whereby federal parties got $2 per vote cast, the Green Party has spent more time chasing voter-dollars than building grass-roots coalitions, which will be required for any political breakthrough. Nevertheless, the nearly one million who have voted Green have a right to be represented, and in our slanted electoral system, this means electing May.

If I was in a Saskatoon seat where the NDP ran second, I would be tempted to vote NDP, and help break the near-monolithic control that Harper Conservatives have on Saskatchewan. But I am not in any of these ridings; I’m in Regina-Qu’Appelle, where Conservative MP Andrew Scheer “wins” big through smiling and deflecting discussions about Harper’s contempt for parliamentary democracy by endlessly playing on the fear of crime. His ads reiterate Harper’s mantra: “the only way to stop the coalition is to elect more conservatives.”

With the NDP running 2nd to Harper Conservatives in Saskatchewan, supporting a Liberal or Green candidate could be seen as a wasted vote. Ignatieff has done better than Layton in defending parliamentary democracy but I am not prepared to vote for a third-place Liberal because of that. And while I agree with some of the Green program (environmental protection, alternative energy and electoral reform) a split vote here will pretty much ensure the re-election of Harper’s MP.

NDP’S MIXED LEGACY

While Layton gained support at the expense of Ignatieff in the debates, the Liberals are right that the NDP has never really been tested in federal governance. Also the NDP’s righteous attacks on the “old-line parties” are a bit hypocritical. In Saskatchewan, where the NDP has itself become an old-line party, with years in government, nothing was done to move towards a sustainable society, e.g. the NDP consistently built up Sask Power’s coal plants, to a point where our individual carbon footprint is Canada’s highest. The NDP were the first champions of the uranium industry, opening the door to nuclear power and nuclear wastes. Them wanting their cake and to eat it too (uranium mines but not nuclear power or wastes) contributes to political cynicism.

Certainly past Premier Tommy Douglas will be remembered as one of the pioneers of Medicare. However, when the dust settles on the partisan nostalgia, after the recent death of past Premier Allan Blakeney, his legacy will be making the Saskatchewan economy even more dependent on unsustainable, non-renewable resources. While he supported the crowns, they were a mirror image of private multi-nationals, and ended up becoming just that: Potash Corp and Cameco. I wonder if it ever crossed Blakeney’s mind in his final years that a nuclear reactor disaster could make Saskatchewan uranium into a global carcinogen. After Fukushima that day has come!

NARROWING THE CHOICE

At least the Greens are unambiguous about the need to move our energy system towards renewables – which some European countries have shown to be quite practical. But a Green vote in my riding would not contribute to a positive federal outcome. At least at the federal level the NDP has been consistent on climate change and Afghanistan, which may explain the big rise in its support among Quebec voters, who are more progressive on environmental and international policy.

Thankfully most Canadians haven’t bought into Harper’s bullying politics, but this doesn’t mean that he still can’t manoeuvre 12 more seats and get a majority. We’ll have to wait and see if the rise in NDP support plays into Harper’s hands. But if the NDP seats were to grow at the expense of Harper MPs, in places like Quebec, Saskatchewan and B.C., and the other opposition parties were to hold their own, Harper wouldn’t get a majority. Perhaps, then, the Conservative Party would realize that having an authoritarian leader isn’t being “Here for Canada” or good for their party’s legacy.

And what if the youth were to “rise up”? The more that vote, the more that resist Harper’s attempt to brand “Canada” as his own, the more resilient our democracy will become. And the more we will be able to tackle the issues of sustainability, no matter what the election outcome. I trust you’ll vote.

http://jimharding.brinkster.net

[Oscar]

MOVING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY SERIES # 4 - May 2011

WHY SASKATCHEWAN SHOULD BAN NUCLEAR WASTES

By Jim Harding, Retired professor of environmental and justice studies

The Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan, a politically non-partisan network of groups across Saskatchewan working for a sustainable future, supports a legislated ban on the importation, transportation and storage of high-level nuclear wastes anywhere in Saskatchewan. (See policy at www.cleangreensask.ca). Towards this end it supports community-information sessions along all southern and northern routes that the nuclear industry is likely to target for transporting nuclear wastes from southern Ontario to northern Saskatchewan.

SASKATCHEWAN IS NOT OBLIGED TO TAKE OTHERS NUCLEAR WASTES

There are many good reasons to support a legislated nuclear waste ban in Saskatchewan. First, Saskatchewan is not obliged to take back nuclear wastes created from Saskatchewan uranium. If Saskatchewan was obliged to take back such wastes we would instantly become an international nuclear dump. Uranium has been sold to many countries around the world, including the U.S., France, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Finland and India. Countries or provinces using nuclear power must be responsible for their own nuclear wastes, and Canada should immediately ban the importing of nuclear wastes from outside the country.
The 400 nuclear plants operating worldwide get uranium from many places besides Saskatchewan, from Australia, Kazakhstan and many other countries. The supply is often mixed and exchanged in the interlocking market. So why should we be singled out as the dump site? We aren’t obliged to take high-level radioactive waste from the U.S. weapons program, though Canada exported uranium between 1953-1966 in secrecy from Uranium City (and Elliot Lake, Ontario) to fuel about one-third of the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal. Nor are we obliged to take nuclear weapons wastes from France, though Canada sold uranium to France prior to it signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1992.
Jurisdictions that decided to “go nuclear” must be responsible for their own waste management, and should have had a plan from the start or not proceeded at all. We are not obliged to take nuclear power plant wastes from Ontario, Quebec or New Brunswick just because Candu reactors there have used some uranium from Saskatchewan. Uranium was also used from the Elliot Lake area in northern Ontario, and that doesn’t mean that area should become a national-international nuclear dump either. It’s too bad that Ontario’s government didn’t listen to its own Porter Commission in 1978 when it called for a moratorium on nuclear power because the province had no nuclear waste plan. But better late than never: a moratorium and phase-out of nuclear power is still required so that there is not a further build-up of nuclear wastes as a curse to future generations.
Northern Saskatchewan and Northern Ontario have already paid dearly for becoming one of the main mining front-ends for the military-industrial nuclear system, accumulating hundreds of thousands of tonnes of toxic uranium tailings that will be radioactive for thousands of years.

SASKATCHEWAN DOESN’T PRODUCE HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTES

Saskatchewan is the only Canadian province targeted for a nuclear dump by the nuclear industry group the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) that doesn’t have any nuclear power plants. So why is the NWMO even here? The government-appointed, industry-based Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) likely hoped Saskatchewan would accept its recommendations and “go nuclear”. Then we too would be producing nuclear wastes. Under these circumstances it would have been easier to argue that we should be considered as a site for nuclear wastes.
But this didn’t happen. Over 80 % of the thousands of people who participated in the UDP’s public consultations in 2009 supported a non-nuclear, renewable energy policy for the province. One of the main reasons Saskatchewan people didn’t want nuclear power was because they didn’t want to create nuclear wastes. And in December 2009 the Sask Party government rejected the nuclear power option promoted by Bruce Power along the North Saskatchewan River because it was inappropriate for our needs and “too costly.”
But the UDP also recommended that the nuclear industry expand in Saskatchewan by taking nuclear wastes from outside the province. This has been the position of one UDP member, Cameco, since the 1990s. Cameco co-owns the privatized nuclear power plants operated in Ontario by Bruce Power, which have accumulated over 40 % of Canada’s total nuclear wastes. These two companies want to find an “out of sight, out of mind” place far away from urbanized Ontario to dump their toxic, radioactive wastes. Once they could claim they had “solved” their nuclear waste problem by dumping it elsewhere they hoped to gain public support for a nuclear renaissance.

THE NWMO IS NOT FOLLOWING THE DUTY TO CONSULT

Ecumenical and environmental activists support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People which calls for “free, prior, informed consent” for Indigenous peoples being targeted by resource or industrial waste companies. Informed consent requires sufficient time for communities to consider all relevant information from all sides of a controversy, without being bribed under threat of losing benefits to another community.
There is no such consent being sought by the NWMO; instead the industry is holding private meetings with Métis and First Nations groups, using monetary inducements to try to convince them to “host” a nuclear dump. Environmental Committees in the north have been used to promote a nuclear dump. The 2009 Report of the government-run North Saskatchewan Environmental Quality Committee (NSEQC)) says the NWMO made “communities aware of the opportunities to host a nuclear waste management storage site” and continues “There will be incredible economic benefits to such a community…” Such one-sided promotion bastardizes environmental protection.
On September 17, 2010 the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) indicated that “The Secretariat has been in discussions with NWMO regarding financial assistance for capacity development, education and awareness and partnership opportunities with First Nations in Saskatchewan.” The communiqué continues, “The (Land and Resources) Commission mandated the Secretariat to seek funding from NWMO for capacity and education.” Not surprising the NWMO responded quickly and on November 17, 2010 it announced that it would be providing the FSIN with $1,000,000 over several years. Later I found that Saskatchewan’s Métis Nation had already taken over $400,000 from the NWMO. This is a lot of money and it carries the risk of creating dependency among political leadership upon high-paying nuclear industry-funded jobs,
Past FSIN Chief Lawrence Joseph tried to get a balanced discussion of nuclear wastes, sponsoring a day where Chiefs could hear the NWMO and also hear criticisms of its proposals by people from the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan. But NWMO’s payoffs will certainly bias the way Chiefs and Indigenous communities are “educated” about nuclear wastes. In a November 18, 2010 interview with the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, FSIN Vice-Chief Lyle Whitefish was reported as saying the FSIN will not be providing any other information besides that coming from the NWMO. “They provide us information and what we do is dispatch that information onto First Nations,” he said. “There are a lot of issues within our nation about nuclear waste and we try and answer, with the support of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, answer a lot of those questions First Nations people have.” Such a one-sided, neo-colonial approach will not and cannot lead to “informed consent.”
I wonder if the FSIN knew that the NWMO is run by the same corporations that create nuclear wastes. I also wonder why the FSIN isn’t using the resources of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), which in 2005 did country-wide consultations on nuclear waste in over 600 First Nations communities, including those in Saskatchewan.
In its 2005 report the Assembly of First Nations wrote: “The NWMO is not an agent of the Crown and therefore cannot fulfill the Crown’s fiduciary obligations to First nations…this obligation cannot be delegated to non-government organizations such as the NWMO.” Many in the Métis Nation agree!

THE NORTH NEEDS ECOLOGICALLY-SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC OPTIONS

Environmentally-sound, non-nuclear social and economic development is what is needed in the north. However there is an ongoing myth that capital-intensive uranium mining can provide the magnitude of jobs required for a quickly growing northern population. In reality uranium mining provides very few jobs; renewables provide 5 to 7 times as many jobs per amount invested. Most of the profits from the privately-owned uranium industry go out of the north and out of province. Provincial uranium revenues are miniscule in comparison to those coming from potash, oil and gas. The main thing trickling down from uranium mining is not economic benefits but toxic tailings that will be radioactive for thousands of years.
A recent Conference Board study found northern Saskatchewan remained the second poorest region in all Canada, even after becoming the world’s major uranium-producing region. The Joint Federal-Provincial Panel (JFPP) on uranium mine expansion in the early 1990s expressed concern that the benefits of uranium mining were not being distributed among northern communities. The JFPP also concluded that it couldn’t guarantee that Saskatchewan uranium didn’t still make it into the weapons stream. But the industry and Romanow’s NDP government of the day barged on doing “business as usual” with their eyes closed. The industry will however, be gone as soon as the profitable uranium deposits run out or uranium demand starts to fall. The north will still be underdeveloped, but now have toxic uranium tailings. This time is coming sooner rather than later, for, the phase-out of nuclear power and cancellation of proposed new plants has accelerated quickly since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan in March 2011.
Preserving and adding-value to renewable resources and embracing renewable energy will be much more effective in providing sustainable jobs and opportunities in the north. This is the global trend; by 2009 there were over 3 million jobs worldwide in green energy. The UN’s Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released research in May, 2011 that shows that up to 80% of global energy needs could be met by green energy by 2050. If this strategy is embraced worldwide it could become our saving grace in our race with catastrophic climate change. Nuclear energy is quickly fading out of the picture, for “going nuclear” would be like going from the frying pan into the fire. Unfortunately, Harper’s Conservative government remains completely out of touch with climate science and the international trend towards green energy.
With the million-dollar promotion of a nuclear dump, the myth of nuclear-driven economic development continues to be spread. But a deep geological repository would be even more capital-intensive than uranium mining, with few local benefits trickling down and many short and long-term environmental health risks. The real benefactors would be the waste container and trucking companies, those providing the gargantuan amounts of fuel, the large geological-engineering corporations, and, of course the nuclear industry itself.
In 2009 the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) reported that for the second year in a row global investments in green energy, which includes renewables, energy efficiency and bio-energy, were greater than in non-renewables - fossil fuels and nuclear combined. It reported that renewables comprised 25% of global capacity and produced 18% of global electric power. Nuclear has steadily declined from a high of 18% of global electricity in 2005, to 13% now. This downward trend will continue after the full costs of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster become widely known.

PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE NORTH AND SOUTH MUST HAVE A VOICE

We can’t accept the NWMO’s attempted end-run on the people of Saskatchewan. In addition to providing a million dollars to the FSIN to “inform” the Chiefs and First Nation communities about nuclear wastes, the NWMO has confirmed that it is already negotiating privately with three northern communities: the Métis community of Pinehouse, whose Mayor heads up the Kineepik Métis Local, the First Nations community at English River, and the mining town of Creighton. Such dealing behind closed doors with communities desperate for economic benefits is not the democratic way to decide whether Saskatchewan should become a nuclear dump. This is no way to make a decision with such far-reaching implications for present and future generations.
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) already raised the warning that the nuclear industry will target impoverished Indigenous communities. The Métis Council of Canada (MCC) has raised related concerns. In its September 2005 report the AFN said: “Some First Nations expressed concern that their need for economic opportunities could be manipulated to facilitate an otherwise unwelcome decision.” The AFN raised the bigger question, saying that “First Nations are deeply concerned about the state of our environment. Our Elders advise us that we should think of the impact of our actions seven generations hence. Nowhere is this truer than with respect to the creation of nuclear waste. The production of energy from nuclear sources is fraught with peril. Disposal of the waste can have unforeseen and potentially dangerous impacts far into the future even if managed with the utmost care and caution.”
The AFN was very critical of the NWMO’s appropriation of First Nations traditions, saying “To cite with favor the seven generations teachings while at the same time promoting nuclear energy is inconsistent at best and at worst denigrates and belittles the value of Traditional Knowledge and the First Nations’ cultures, beliefs and spiritual understandings.” The FSIN, Métis Nation and other First Nations and Métis persons taking money from the NWMO should take note.
And what of all the Métis and First Nations communities in the north living in common watersheds or within common Treaty areas that would be affected by a nuclear dump? Will they have a voice? As the AFN said in 2005, “First Nations are concerned that a decision made by their neighbouring communities to volunteer to host a waste management facility could have a detrimental impact on their Aboriginal and Treaty rights.” It continued, “Conversely, a decision by a First Nation to host a facility would have to consider the impacts on their non-Aboriginal neighbours.”
What of all the people in southern Saskatchewan, farming or living in the communities that would be along any nuclear waste transportation route from southern Ontario to Saskatchewan’s north? There must be a fully transparent public participation process, one not run by industry handouts and one-sided disinformation, that allows all people of Saskatchewan - north and south, indigenous and settler, rural and urban - to become independently and fully informed on this matter.

DEEP GEOLOGICAL STORAGE WAS NOT ACCEPTED BY CANADIANS

After the federal Seaborn inquiry ended eight years of deliberations in 1998, the Commissioners concluded that Canadians did not support AECL’s proposed deep geological storage of nuclear wastes. It called for an arms-length, non-industry group to take the lead in any further consideration of nuclear wastes, which, unfortunately was not done; instead we got the industry-based NWMO.
This promotion of deep geological burial as a public acceptance strategy of the nuclear industry has already run into serious problems. After spending $13 billion, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste burial project on Shoshone territory in Nevada had to be cancelled because of underground water movement, geological fault systems and widespread indigenous and settler opposition. So the U.S. is now “back to the drawing board”, not sure what to do with the equivalent of 90,000 shipments of nuclear wastes it has now accumulated without any waste management plan.
AECL’s experiments with deep geological “storage” at Lac Du Bonnet, Manitoba in the 1980s also continually ran into problems, including leaking underground caverns and radioactive material spreading through the local watershed. A leaked report showed unacceptable levels of radioactivity in the Winnipeg River, and, after provincial monitoring started, in drinking water samples. All these problems found in this small-scale geological experiment would almost certainly happen if a mega-repository were constructed
Yet the NWMO has come back with the same repackaged “plan”, in the hope that Saskatchewan’s sparse northern population, mostly Métis and First Nations, will be unable to muster the same informed opposition and demand for public transparency that has occurred in more populous regions in Ontario and Manitoba. The million dollar industrial promotional “gift” is the NWMO’s insurance policy against such transparency. The economic bribery being used by the industry-based NWMO is clearly a continuation of past colonial approaches to the north.
We need to remember that there are not only two provincial bans on nuclear storage/importation (Manitoba and Quebec) but that two provinces have legislative bans on toxic uranium mining (British Columbia and Nova Scotia). The double standard which makes indigenous populations vulnerable to both uranium tailings and nuclear wastes has rightly been called environmental racism.
In 1998, after deliberating for almost a decade, the Seaborn Inquiry concluded that ‘from a social perspective” the safety of the concept of deep geological disposal of nuclear wastes had not been demonstrated, and that “the concept cannot be regarded as acceptable if it fails to demonstrate safety” from both a social and technical perspective.

CENTRALIZING NUCLEAR WASTES PRESENTS GREAT ECOLOGICAL DANGERS

It’s never been established that burying millions of spent fuel bundles in the Canadian Shield will accomplish safe “disposal”. No such plan has been successfully accomplished anywhere, though several have been tried. And there are many good reasons to reject this notion. Geology is not a predictive science and past geological stability in the Canadian Shield doesn’t mean that such stability will continue on for the hundreds of thousands of years that nuclear wastes will be radioactive. The construction of a repository would inevitably de-stabilize the rock formation and increase the chances of fractures and the movement of underground water. There would always be some form of natural blowback to such a radioactive mega-project.
A nuclear dump would be a dynamic, unpredictable system, and the industry knows this full well. According to projections in AECL’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) presented to the Seaborn Inquiry, it would take 50,000 years for the ambient (surrounding) temperature created by the “thermal pulse” from nuclear wastes, to fall back to near where it was before the nuclear wastes were placed there. Also, the industry is not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth when it says that the radioactivity from nuclear wastes will drop sharply after six or so hundred years and continue to decline. It is only the gamma radiation that declines in this period; the much more toxic alpha radiation starts to increase. According to the Porter Commission, after 100,000 years the overall toxicity increases due to the buildup of other radionuclides, which are created by the gradual disintegration of the long-lived ones present in the original irradiated fuel. The increasing alpha radioactivity coming from such things as the decay of plutonium, with a half-life of 26,000 years, would be bio-available to contaminate the interconnected aquifers, waterways and eco-systems within and beyond the region, forever.
The industry is willing to ignore or downplay these real dangers for the sake of its own agenda. They simply cannot be trusted. An independent body will be required to develop credible proposals about what do with Canada’s nuclear wastes. They will need to make the best of a very bad thing that shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place. Such an arms-length organization should be established once it is clear that the nuclear industry is being phased-out and is no longer able to use a hypothetical waste management system to justify continuing to produce nuclear wastes.

NUCLEAR WASTES SHOULD BE BETTER STORED AT OR NEAR NUCLEAR PLANTS

The industry has continually made false promises about their wastes, guaranteeing those who live nearby that someday the high-level wastes would be taken away to “who knows where.” This hasn’t happened for three generations. It makes more ecological and economic sense to store them at or near the nuclear plants that create them.
In 2005 the NWMO estimated there were 1.8 million spent fuel bundles totaling 40,000 tonnes of nuclear wastes in Canada. There are now easily 2 million highly-radioactive spent fuel bundles, and the number will double if existing plants are allowed to operate for their projected life-span. (Any new plants such as at Darlington, Ontario, will add further to the total.) To transport this highly radioactive nuclear waste from the nuclear plants, mostly in southern Ontario, to northern Saskatchewan, would involve about 18,000 heavily armed truck or trainloads travelling in perpetuity, past farms, towns and cities in northern Ontario, southern Manitoba and southern and northern Saskatchewan. Even after all nuclear plants were shut down the transportation to a central repository would continue for years since the spent fuel would have to remain on site for years until its radioactive-thermal heat dropped enough to allow movement.
Prince Albert and La Ronge would become the gateway to a nuclear dump, not to northern fishing, hunting, trapping and eco-tourism. More land-based activities would be threatened; it is likely that many more jobs would be lost than gained. Transportation accidents are almost certain at such a frequency. The fossil fuel, carbon footprint resulting from this scale of transportation would make a mockery of the nuclear industry’s claim to be “clean energy.” The region would live in a state of pervasive apprehension.
Rather than a northern Saskatchewan community being bribed to host a nuclear dump, the wastes should be kept close to where they are created; on-site storage should be maintained, upgraded and secured. There is much to learn from the Nuclear Guardianship perspective developing in the U.S., which recognizes our responsibility to future generations to quickly stop the production of these deadly wastes and reduce the burden of managing the wastes for the necessary 100,000 years – many times humanity’s recorded history.

WE DON’T WANT SASKATCHEWAN REPROCESSING PLUTONIUM

A centralized nuclear dump is not primarily about “safe or permanent storage”; it is a Trojan Horse for future plutonium reprocessing. A 1977 report leaked from AECL’s Lac Du Bonnet research station confirmed that their underground repository was designed to retrieve spent fuel for future reprocessing. This same plan has been carried forward by the NWMO. In its 2005 Report it says, “Waste management approaches that ensure accessibility to the used fuel for a sufficiently long time would provide the adaptability and flexibility to enable future generations to make decisions on the case for reprocessing.”
Ever-cheaper renewable energy technologies have already surpassed the electricity produced world-wide by nuclear power and the nuclear industry knows that it is running out of economically-recoverable uranium fuel. More than half of Saskatchewan’s economically-recoverable uranium deposits are mined out and we’ve passed “peak uranium” globally. With the cost of renewable coming down so fast, the uranium-nuclear industry must be getting worried that it can’t compete. The survival strategy of the industry is two-folded: first, to claim to have solved its nuclear waste problem by negotiating centralized storage of spent fuel bundles, and second, ensuring that these wastes remain accessible for reprocessing plutonium as nuclear fuel as uranium runs out.
The process of mixing plutonium and uranium to make what’s called MOX fuel was already underway at one of Japan’s damaged Fukushima plants. This, along with the radioactivity from the loss-of-coolant damage of the spent fuel storage system, is probably how widespread plutonium contamination occurred. Plutonium reprocessing is also underway in France, one of the most uranium-dependent countries. Areva, the uranium company operating in northern Saskatchewan, is part of the same interlocked state corporation that reprocesses plutonium and produces nuclear weapons in France.
Reprocessing leaves an even more mobile high-level radioactive waste and greatly increases the dangers of weapons proliferation because the plutonium becomes much more accessible. This is why several countries, including the U.S., ban reprocessing. The U.S. ban is supported both by the Academy of Science and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Reprocessing is also extremely costly; the United Kingdom’s reprocessing plant at Sellafield has been a steady drain on the taxpayer and has now gone bankrupt.
Meanwhile, without any seeming concern for these hard experiences elsewhere, the nuclear industry-run UDP supported both nuclear wastes being brought to Saskatchewan and the University of Saskatchewan becoming a centre for research on alternative nuclear fuels, i.e. plutonium. Let there be no mistake that a nuclear dump in northern Saskatchewan means the possibility of plutonium reprocessing down the road. As the UDP Report says “…a Saskatchewan-based reprocessing facility may have substantial local and regional economic benefits given the magnitude of the expenditure and employment associated with the facility.” As Financial Vice President at the U of S, the UDP Chair Richard Florizone had a huge conflict of interest. Some self-interested academics have seemingly turned a blind eye to the fundamental ecological dangers of nuclear wastes.
If full-costing of nuclear technology was required, and included the long-term management of uranium tailings, reactor spent fuel, decommissioning and complete liability for nuclear disasters such as at Chernobyl and Fukushima, the industry would already be dead in the water. These not-so-hidden costs are covered by the taxpayer. Most taxpayers would rather invest in sustainable energy.

WE NEED TO DEMOCRATIZE WASTE MANAGEMENT

The nuclear industry has long tried to justify its expansion by promising that a solution to nuclear wastes was in the works. The panacea, we are constantly told, will be geological disposal. But the public has steadily become more informed and skeptical about such a hypothetical “permanent” solution on a planet that recycles elements in perpetuity. And don’t be fooled - the NWMO’s “adaptive phased management” is just fancy wording for “no plan.”
It’s understandable that the contradictions are becoming intolerable for communities living near nuclear plants. One U.S. group that bought into the false 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”. In March, 2010, 170 groups in 50 U.S. 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 to get plutonium.
The original cooling pools at nuclear plants were only to be used to store nuclear wastes temporarily. However, after three generations there still is no long-term way to deal with these wastes. Nuclear wastes have sometimes accumulated well beyond their storage design capacity with concentrations approaching that within the reactor core. Any loss-of-coolant crisis resulting from an accident or attack would risk a radiological fire with huge radioactive releases to the region, something that seems to have already happened at Japan’s Fukushima reactors. The U.S. Network rightly wants funds for state and community monitoring to ensure that companies aren’t placing civilians at risk by cutting corners to meet the bottom line. It is now known that Tepco, the company running the Fukushima plants, did just this. In 2002 its senior executives resigned for covering up “a large series of cracks and other damages to reactors.” In 2006 Tepco admitted “it has been falsifying data about coolant materials in its plants.”
Vulnerable communities near Ontario’s nuclear reactors should be directly involved in monitoring nuclear waste management. Meanwhile, the nuclear industry that began under the cloak of military secrecy continues to operate commercially under the cloak of the not-so-transparent and clearly pro-nuclear regulatory system, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). At a time when the public is seeing what de-regulation has done in the financial sector and off-shore oil-drilling, the nuclear industry wants reduced environmental oversight so it can fast-track and cost-cut new plants. Community environmental networks are forming because the industry hasn’t dealt with the “trash” it has already created.
It’s completely understandable why the Canadian public lacks fundamental 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 eight years ago in 2002, when it passed the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act that enabled the industry-run Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to form. The NWMO now travels across Canada, concentrating on northern Saskatchewan, using monetary incentives to find an Indigenous community willing to “host” nuclear wastes. It promotes the concept of geological disposal that the U.S. pursued for nearly three decades and has now had to abandon. It promotes a notion that wasn’t accepted by Canadians in the Seaborn environmental review!

THERE ARE ALREADY NUCLEAR WASTE BANS IN OTHER PROVINCES

The AECL that made the Candu reactors without any plan for their nuclear wastes was the first to advocate centralized deep geological storage of nuclear wastes in Canada. After facing stiff community opposition for its drilling program in Ontario towns like Madoc and Atikokan in the 1970s, the crown corporation moved west to Lac Du Bonnet, Manitoba. After a decade of nuclear secrecy and attempted cover-ups of failings in the deep-rock storage experiments, in 1987 Manitoba’s Pawley NDP government passed The High-Level Radioactive Waste Act banning the storage of nuclear wastes. The AECL tried to relocate its research back in Ontario, but was rebuffed by residents at New Likard and Massey. That’s when the industry came to Saskatchewan, in 1991 trying to broker a deal with the Meadow Lake and District Chiefs to host a nuclear dump. This attempt failed due to the good work of Native Grandmothers in the community.
On October 30, 2008, Quebec’s legislature unanimously passed a resolution banning the importation of nuclear wastes. This means Quebec will have take responsibility for the wastes at its own reactors, which are small in comparison to Ontario, but is unwilling to import the bulk of Canada’s nuclear wastes. So the provinces to the immediate east and west of Ontario, where most of Canada’s nuclear plants and nuclear wastes exist, have both banned importation and/or storage of nuclear wastes! Saskatchewan seems to be the last outpost for the NWMO and its nuclear industry backers.
Canadian Press recently got NWMO documents through Access to Information which suggested that Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are the most favourable to taking nuclear wastes. The Premier of New Brunswick was quick to publicly protest that his province wasn’t about to become the country’s nuclear dump. But not a peep from Saskatchewan’s Premier Wall! Shouldn’t we be able to expect the same protection from high-level nuclear wastes from our provincial government as people in Manitoba, Quebec and New Brunswick?
Or is this discrepancy the result of years of “public relations” propaganda by the uranium industry? Are we going to be suckers for the bribery and disinformation of the nuclear industry and accept a nuclear dump?
I don’t think so! In early April a 5,000-name petition initiated by the North Saskatchewan River Environmental Society, opposing any nuclear expansion, including a nuclear dump, was presented to the Legislature by Saskatoon NDP MLA Pat Atkinson. In an interview about this petition Premier Wall admitted there was “negative public opinion about a nuclear waste facility”. He added “I don’t sense the mood of the province has changed, and frankly, what’s happening in Japan has got people thinking, just generally speaking about the issue”.
Yes, it has got us thinking, though there has barely been mention that one of Cameco’s major customers is Tepco, the company operating the Fukushima reactors; nor that Tepco is Cameco’s partner in the Cigar Lake uranium venture. No mention that the radioactive by-products of uranium from Saskatchewan used as fuel at Fukushima is now spreading as a global carcinogen.
Why isn’t Wall’s Sask Party government biting the bullet and supporting all-party backed legislation banning nuclear wastes here? It is going to take a concerted effort by community-based groups across the north and south to get this matter on to Saskatchewan’s political agenda. The initiative by the Committee for Future Generations to hold a “Northern Forum for Truth on Nuclear Waste Storage” at Beauval on June 2, 2011 is most encouraging. We shouldn’t procrastinate as the NWMO continues on with its clandestine approach and now has a majority Harper government supporting its plan. This matter should be made front and centre during the fall 2011 Saskatchewan provincial election. Wherever we live let’s do whatever we can to make this happen.
At its May 28, 2010 annual conference held in Moose Jaw the United Church, the largest in the province, passed a resolution “prohibiting the transport or storage of high level nuclear waste across Saskatchewan.” At its 2009 annual convention the Saskatchewan NDP passed policy that an NDP government will not consider “storing nuclear wastes under any circumstances.” The Green Party has consistently supported such a ban. Even Sask Party’s Energy Minister Boyd has admitted there is little grass-roots support for a nuclear dump here.

= = = = = =

NOTES:

i This was initially to be published in September 2010. I had hoped to have it completed before community forums in Saskatoon, La Ronge and Prince Albert in February 2011, but so much happened, so quickly, that it was postponed. It is being issued now to be available for the Northern Forum for Truth on Nuclear Waste Storage, on June 2nd at Beauval. Previously I wrote several columns for R-Town weekly papers containing more details than are included in this general booklet. These can be located at:
http://jimharding.brinkster.net.
From highest to lowest production the uranium-producing countries are: Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Niger, Namibia, Uzbekistan, USA, Ukraine, China, South Africa, Czech Republic, Brazil, India, Romania, Pakistan, Germany, France.
A Race Against Time: An Interim Report on Nuclear Power, Ontario’s Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning, 1978.
See Dan Perrins, The Future Of Uranium Public Consultation Process, September, 2009.
For details on this controversy see my “The Nuclear Way: A Close Look at Bruce Power’s Mega-Plan for Saskatchewan”, # 3 in this Series, December 2009.
See “Capturing the full potential of the uranium value chain in Saskatchewan”, Uranium Development Partnership, March 2009, p. 78.
Annual Report, North Saskatchewan Environmental Quality Committee, 2009.
Communiqué, Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, September 17, 2010.
The text of my September 22, 2008 talk to the FSIN Chiefs, “Towards An Indigenous-Settler Alliance On The Nuclear Controversy”, is posted at: http://jimharding.brinkster.net.
Saskatoon Star Phoenix, November 18, 2010.
For example, in 2003 provincial uranium revenues were only $14 million. According to the April 18, 2010 Star Phoenix, in 2008 Cameco’s CEO received total compensation of “just over $4.5 million, up from 3.7 million in 2007”.
Conference Board of Canada, Northern Canada Includes both the wealthiest and poorest regions in Canada, July 29, 2010.
I discuss this in detail in Canada’s Deadly Secret, Fernwood, 2007, Chapter 14, pp. 173-191.
This may already be happening in Nunavut. See Nathan Vanderklyne, “Fukushima chills uranium development”, The Globe and Mail, May 18, 2011.
I wrote several pieces for R-Town papers on the Fukushima nuclear disaster. See these at: http://jimharding.brinskter.net.
Global Trends in Green Energy 2009, UNEP, July, 1010.

Special Report Renewable Energy Sources (SRREN), United Nations, May 9, 2011.
“Response to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s Report”, Metis Council of Canada, 2005.
Recommendations to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, Assembly of First Nations, September, 2005.
I have personally raised this matter directly with Jim Sinclair, whom I respect for his past work helping get Aboriginal Rights into Canada’s Charter of Rights. He is now working with the NWMO’s Elder’s group Niigani.
The Seaborn Inquiry was the federal Environmental Assessment Panel for AECL’s proposed deep geological storage of nuclear wastes. It was appointed in October 1989 and wasn’t able to report until March 1998; the longest and most comprehensive environmental review in Canadian history.
See Walter Robbins excellent history of this struggle with the AECL in, Getting The Shaft: The Radioactive Waste Controversy in Manitoba, Queenston House, Winnipeg, 1984.
According to these calculations the temperature would still be twice as great as it was originally.
I am indebted to Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) for this information.
This means that after 26,000 years, half of the original plutonium is still present. The half that is no longer plutonium has decayed into several other radionuclides, which remain extremely toxic.
The position of Nuclear Waste Watch (November 2003) is similar to that of the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Environmental Society (SES).
Choosing a Way Forward: The Future Management of Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel, Final Report, NWMO, November 2005, p. 350.
Assuming 200 spent fuel bundles per container-load.
Go to: nuclearguardianship.org
See Walter Robbins, Getting The Shaft.
Choosing a Way Forward, op. cit., p. 387.
The IAEA estimates there is only 80 years of recoverable uranium left, so if nuclear power expands it will need reprocessed plutonium.
For one source on this see “Nuclear Industry Financial and Safety Nightmare”, Institute of Science and Society, September 22, 2008.
UDP, op. cit., p. 69.
See beyondnuclear.org, March 24, 2010.
See The Independent, March 16, 2011.
The firing of Linda Keen as head of the CNSC, for wanting to shut down the Chalk River reactor because it failed to meet safety requirements, showed that the agency is not independent. The reactor still had to be shut down.
See Walter Robbins, Getting The Shaft. I have also done a column for R-Town on the Manitoba history, available at: http:jimharding.brinkster.net
Manitobans might want to work for amendments so that their legislation also bans transportation, and there is no chance of nuclear wastes being tucked through Manitoba to Saskatchewan. We have a lot to learn from Manitoba’s struggle to ban nuclear wastes. A non-nuclear conference held in Winnipeg in 1986 played a critical role. See Anne Wieser (editor), Challenges to Nuclear Waste: Proceedings of the Nuclear Waste Issues Conference, September 12-14, 1986, Concerned Citizens of Manitoba, 1987.
One promoter of this was Ray Ahenakew, past CEO of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, who was appointed to the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) as the First Nations representative. All those appointed were declared nuclear proponents.
Jonathan Montpetit, “SK, NB reportedly receptive for nuclear waste dump”, Thestar.com, Feb. 20, 2011.
Regina Leader Post, April 15, 2011, A3.
Contact them at: committeeforfuturegenerations@gmail.com. Facebook: Say No to Nuclear Waste Storage in Northern Saskatchewan.

[Oscar]

WHY THE NORTHERN SASKATCHEWAN FORUM VOTED TO BAN NUCLEAR WASTES

http://forum.stopthehogs.com/phpBB2/vie ... =2139#2139

By Jim Harding R-Town Papers, June 10, 2011
On the afternoon of June 2nd two hundred people mostly from ten northern communities gathered in the school auditorium at Beauval for the "Forum for Truth on Nuclear Waste Storage". It was organized by the recently formed Committee for Future Generations, which in barely two weeks got the word out all across northern Saskatchewan. When I arrived at Beauval late on June 1st I was astonished by the number of road signs announcing the event.
People came from Beauval, La Loche, Buffalo Narrows, Ile a la Crosse, Canoe Narrows, Turnor Lake, Pinehouse, Patuanak and La Ronge. A few also came from Prince Albert, Saskatoon, Lloydminster and Regina. Northern mayors, elders, women and youth attended, with the presence of youth being remarkably strong. When I walked into the school auditorium I was greeted by students holding signs they had painted for the forum, saying: "Why here?; "We Want To Keep Our Environment Clean and Safe"; "Why Is This Happening?", and "Is Mother Earth Important To You?" One read: "We Don't Want Your Death Money!"
Great concern was expressed about the way the nuclear industry was trying to buy its way into northern politics and culture. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has created a committee of hand-picked, paid "elders" who they say will bring an "Aboriginal perspective" to the search for a northern community to host a nuclear dump. The Committee for Future Generations has asked "who are they, how were they appointed, what is the protocol for representation, how are they being accountable to the people, and how are they getting paid?" These are questions the NWMO should answer.
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and Métis Council of Canada have warned of this insidious approach. In its 2005 report the AFN said "To cite with favour the seven generations teaching while at the same time promoting nuclear energy is inconsistent at best and at worst denigrates and belittles the value of Traditional Knowledge and the First Nations cultures, beliefs and spiritual practices."

DEATH MONEY

If NWMO sincerely wanted to get aboriginal community perspective it would have come to this widely-attended gathering. But Pat Patton, who heads up NWMO's "Aboriginal Relations", declined. It turned out that her previous commitment was taking Pinehouse and Patuanak officials to tour a nuclear facility in eastern Canada. So while people from the communities being targeted for a nuclear dump gathered to ask questions and air concerns, some elected community officials were away on a nuclear industry-sponsored tour.
This is clearly more about manipulation than consultation.
The Committee for Future Generations calls for complete transparency of NWMO's activities in the north. Many at the forum expressed concerns and even anger about all the meetings behind closed doors. A closed NWMO strategy meeting at Pinehouse May 4th inadvertently left its flip-charts behind. These were most revealing. One recorded comment was about "sugar-coating the information" going into the north. Another was about being sure there were "knowledge interpreters". Some NWMO-selected, paid "elders" were in attendance.
The NWMO is following a two-track strategy in the north. On the one hand it says that a community has to agree to "host" a nuclear dump; that there must be "informed consent". On the other hand it works behind the scene, with multi-million dollar inducements, to make sure some people are already benefitting, while sugar-coating a nuclear dump to sound good for the north. Several Métis and First Nations leaders spoke eloquently about how NWMO's process is undermining the duty to consult. NWMO's deceit is starting to unravel.

FINDING BALANCE

The NWMO wouldn't send anyone to this first large northern forum on nuclear wastes. It also wrote the organizers that high-profile paid "elders" like Jim Sinclair couldn't speak for NWMO. But the Committee for Future Generations didn't want the forum to occur without the NWMO's position being fairly presented. They did not want to repeat what the NWMO does and present only one side of the controversy. So right at the beginning they played two NWMO's video's describing the nuclear waste repository project.
I was then invited to speak about why Saskatchewan should declare a ban on nuclear wastes. I've read most NWMO documents as part of my ongoing research, but was still taken by the statement in one video that their nuclear waste containers would "last 100,000 years". How can any credible organization make such a claim? And how would future generations ever verify this? Would people continue to communicate about NWMO's guarantee of a period ten times recorded history, and then, after 100,000 years, risk digging down to see if the containers were still intact? And if they weren't intact, where would they go? And anyway we know that the radioactivity in the nuclear wastes would actually rise after 100,000 years.
Such absurd NWMO claims show why an arms-length body, not controlled by industry, should be considering what to do with nuclear wastes. I asked those at the forum what they would think if DOW Chemical or DuPont came to their community to entice them to take their toxic chemical wastes. We wouldn't tolerate this. So why are the Wall and Harper governments even allowing the nuclear industry to try to find a place to dump their wastes in the north?

ARMS LENGTH GROUP

A non-industry group should be looking at realistic options for nuclear wastes, including stopping producing them. And you can be sure that it wouldn't consider trucking 18,000 truckloads of high-level nuclear wastes half way across Canada to dump in northern Saskatchewan. The only reason the industry is shopping around here is because Ontario doesn't want to have to dump its nuclear wastes within its more densely populated province. And the major rationale for centralizing waste storage is to be able to get the plutonium as a future fuel source.
If a geological repository was such a safe idea and would bring such economic benefits, why isn't it happening in southern Ontario, near the nuclear plants? The nuclear plants are, after all, also in the Canadian Shield. History explains! Northern Ontario kicked the industry out in the 1970s, Manitoba did the same thing in the 1980s, and now Quebec has banned importing nuclear wastes. When the industry came to Saskatchewan in 1991, to the Meadow Lake Tribal Council (MLTC), they were also told to go home. But the industry has come back in sheep's clothing, peddling the same idea that was rejected by the federal inquiry in 1998. This time the NWMO is playing the economic card in a big way.
FORUM SAYS NO!
The Committee for Future Generations has seen through the deceit. After seeing NWMO's videos, hearing the argument for a nuclear waste ban, and hearing from many people from the north, the forum voted unanimously to ban nuclear wastes in Saskatchewan. It also voted to hold more open forums, the next one to be held in Pinehouse where the NWMO is in negotiations to host a nuclear dump. After that they will go to Patuanak, the other targeted community. Some elders also asked for their names and photos to be removed from NWMO documents, so there was no impression being left that they supported a nuclear dump in the north. Now we will have to wait and see whether the NWMO just ups the ante, and pours even more "death money" into the north, or whether the hand-picked "elders" still receiving NWMO money finally realize they don't speak for their communities.
This is self-determination and participatory democracy in action. People throughout the south who don't want to see nuclear wastes trucked along their highways should support the northerners who have spoken at this forum.
You can show your support by contacting: committeeforfuturegenerations@gmail.com or going to their Face book: "Say No To Nuclear Waste Storage In Northern Saskatchewan".

More on nuclear waste at:
http://jimharding.brinkster.net