Energy Probe

A response to Doug Saunders' article for the Globe and Mail

Re: Test puts nuclear salesman in harsh light
(Original article appears below)

When considering the role played by Pakistani nuclear official Abdul Qadeer Khan in assisting North Korea's nuclear-energy and weapons program, Canadians should examine the assistance we have provided in this evil chain of events.

Only months after Canadian-made reactors were rejected in U.S. and Chinese markets, Canada's 60-year-old civilian nuclear industry has suffered a potentially mortal blow at home. Facing a $1.6-billion repair bill, the government of Ontario decided this month to mothball two 540-megawatt Canada Deuterium-Uranium (CANDU) nuclear reactors more than a decade before their projected retirement date.

Eighteen months after it began producing electricity following a refurbishment that was years behind schedule and over budget, a key Pickering nuclear unit has been shutdown until July for unanticipated repairs.

The Unit 4 reactor, which the Ontario government is counting on to supply 500 megawatts of power throughout the summer, was taken out of service unexpectedly last month after Ontario Power Generation discovered problems with feeder pipes in another unit that is being refurbished.

Dear Friend:

The federal government, and three provincial governments, are about to sink billions more dollars into another attempt to salvage the nuclear industry, the country's least economic energy industry – and its most dangerous.

Last month, New Brunswick discovered that its nuclear reactor at Point Lepreau had cracks in its main steam pipe. Cracks in the same piece of equipment at a reactor in Japan just months before had led to an accident that boiled alive four workers and severely scalded seven others.

We have learned that the federal government has quietly begun giving its friends in the nuclear industry new access to the public purse, in order to fund plans for massive nuclear power growth.

For Jerry Hopwood, the Wigan Coalfield served as a sobering lesson about the cost of man's need for energy. During his youth, in the ?50s and ?60s, in Manchester, England, Hopwood witnessed its ravages first-hand. "I grew up around coal mines and coal dust, and people dying of silicosis and mine accidents," he says.

For four decades, in three provinces, under Liberal, Conservative and NDP governments alike, nuclear power has brought Canadians nothing but grief.

In New Brunswick, nuclear power has all but bankrupted NB Power. The utility now has negative net worth and an insecure supply of power, all because its big gamble in building its one nuclear plant – which accounts for 30% of that small province's production when operating – didn't pay off.

Tom Adams' response to "Think tank predicts need for nuclear plants necessary to meet growing demand," published by The Globe and Mail, October 17, 2003. The Globe and Mail article discussed a study conducted by the Canadian Energy Research Institute posted on the Canadian Nuclear Association's Web site at: www.cna.ca/english/files/study/CNAStudySept16-03.pdf

Letter to the Editor
The Globe and Mail

Under the deal, taxpayers take on responsibility for the company's decommissioning liabilities. According to one report, this avoids the UK government from having to include the nuclear stockpile of debt in the public finances, an amount that might sum to £4 billion (British Energy nuclear stations could go for £1 each, By Michael Harrison, The Independent).

Official blames 'minor issue'. Bruce units said almost ready to go

Less than a week after promising an idled nuclear reactor at Pickering would be producing full power by the end of September, Ontario Power Generation has been forced to take it out of service.

In a related development yesterday, officials at the Bruce Power nuclear plant on Lake Huron said their facility is ready to produce more electricity – four months behind schedule. They wouldn't set a date.

Power blackouts in Ontario are likely this winter or next summer. Last summer, we had barely enough power to scrape by, relying on emergency imports of power to make it through. The next time harsh weather drives up our need for power, the power system will be even weaker than it was in the summer.

The cause of our power problems is straightforward. Instead of promoting conservation and private sector investment in clean and inexpensive power plants, the government is betting our future on subsidized prices, expensive and risky nuclear power, and polluting coal power.

The meltdown in the stock price of British Energy - down 92% from its peak - demonstrates that nuclear power is not remotely economic.

Here is a corporation - the world's only listed nuclear generating company operating in a competitive arena - that seemingly has everything going for it, most recently a windfall in Ontario, where it leases eight Candu reactors.

And still this company's stock performs more like a vanishing dot-com than the asset-rich, low-debt company that it is.

I read with disappointment and concern

. . . Tom Adams' lopsided attack on Canada's nuclear industry (Last Call for AECL Subsidies, March 20). Disappointment because of the lack of balance in the article. Concern because these sentiments had misguidedly been connected to me.

Should Canada continue to bankroll that perennial money loser, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's nuclear reactor sales program? Herb Dhaliwal, the new federal Minister of Natural Resources, will soon be putting that question before the federal Cabinet, along with two reviews designed to inform their opinion.

BRUSSELS, March 1 (Reuters) - Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said on Friday that his cabinet would ask parliament to pass a controversial bill to shut down the nation's nuclear reactors by 2025, emulating similar moves by Sweden and Germany.

"We are going to proceed with the closure of nuclear plants between 2015 and 2025," he told a news conference after the weekly cabinet meeting. "It is a balanced and realistic decision."

The report, written by a six-member SWAT team of U.S. nuclear experts handpicked by Andognini, himself a nuclear engineer, is a corporate colonic that damns the utility’s nuclear operation as a problem-plagued, mismanaged horror. As a remedy, seven of Ontario Hydro’s 19 CANDU reactors, the jewel in the crown of the ever-hopeful Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), will be shut down while Hydro resources will be concentrated on re-engineering the remaining troubled 12.

Ontario’s CANDUs are growing old - and the four venerable A units at
Pickering and three more at the Bruce generating station on the shores
of Lake Huron, all of which Ontario Hydro has decided to mothball, may
never resume operation.

The era of nuclear power is coming to a close and your support for Energy Probe is a big part of the reason. For decades we have advocated a non-nuclear future for Canada, pointing out the environmental and economic irresponsibility of continuing with the nuclear option. Ontario Hydro is finally starting to appreciate the truth of this position and is closing seven more reactors on top of the one reactor that closed in 1995.

On many fronts, 1997 was a watershed year for Energy Probe and Canada's environment.

In the twenty years since I started working at Energy Probe on nuclear energy and environmental issues, some amazing advances have happened and become widely known, with our help:

• The nuclear industry's promise -- to produce reliable, safe, economical power -- has proven false. As a result, nuclear utility companies around the world have lost the confidence of their neighbours and their investors, and reactors have become "stranded assets" unable to pay down their mortgages.

   

Re: Test puts nuclear salesman in harsh light

(Original article appears below)

When considering the role played by Pakistani nuclear official Abdul Qadeer Khan in assisting North Korea's nuclear-energy and weapons program, Canadians should examine the assistance we have provided in this evil chain of events.