magazine / ja05
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July/August 2005 issue |
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REVERBERATIONS
Nuclear reaction
"Nuclear resurrection" (CG May/June 2005) is an excellent article,
one of the best that I have seen. As a person
with 40-plus years in the power field, I
would like to add my two cents' worth.
- Nuclear has always been the most
expensive generating option with the
highest capital cost, including heavy water
— approximately 11 cents per kilowatt
hour for Darlington. (In fairness to
Darlington, there was a real manufacturing
blunder on the steam generators there
and at Point Lepreau, which delayed
their erection.)
- What is not generally known and is
rarely publicized is that nuclear plants
cannot follow as the electrical load of
the system rises and falls. They must
run at 85 percent load or higher, or they
will shut themselves down (i.e., they
must be baseloaded for technical and
commercial reasons).
- Ontario has about 6,000 megawatts
(MW) of firm hydro, even in low water
levels, and roughly 10,800 MW of
nuclear. The off-seasons, spring and fall,
have a daily load of about 12,500 MW to
maybe 20,000 MW. Since there is too
much baseload capacity now, we surely
don’t need any more.
- The reliability of nuclear reactors is
really questionable. In March, three shut
down with forced outages, causing a voltage
reduction and big imports.
- Bruce Power is making money
because it got a sweetheart deal and is
better managed than Ontario Power
Generation.
Environmentalists in Ontario are not as
pragmatic as those in Alberta, where they
view supercritical coal-fired power plants
as an acceptable solution. If Ontario
replaced the old coal-fired and nucleargenerating
plants with a little bit of intelligent
thinking, it would have a more balanced
system. The highly efficient supercritical
plants would produce electricity at
a cost of about 0.0675 cents per kilowatt
hour — well below any other type of generation.
Compared with traditional coal-fired power generation, they produce
approximately 12 percent less carbon
dioxide and less than 10 percent of the
smog and acid rain.
Pat Ross
Brockville, Ont.
This article is nothing more than
propaganda from big business and a
former provincial Conservative government
that was widely seen to be in
industry’s pocket. The writer glosses over
the fact that the public paid billions of
dollars for the construction of nuclear
reactors. We need to remember that
Ontario Hydro was created with taxpayers’
money. It designed and built the
generating plants, paid for the offices,
staff and equipment and erected the
transmission lines.
The only reason that Bruce Power,
Canada's first so-called privatized nuclear
generating company, can show a profit is
because the taxpayer is swallowing billions
of dollars of Ontario Hydro debt.
Citizens of Ontario should be asking,
"What other sweetheart deals has the
former Conservative government concocted
that give millions or billions of
dollars of public property to the private
sector, while leaving the taxpayer to pick
up the tab?"
Dan Palmateer
Toronto
Darlington, built at a staggering cost
of almost $15 billion, has been operating
for only 13 years, and yet remarkably,
it has already reached mid-life.
When Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. can
build reactors that last as long as the waste
they generate, then I will convert to supporting
nuclear energy.
Hugh Robertson
Ottawa
Elaine Dewar's conclusion at the
end of her otherwise excellent article
on nuclear power is absolutely 100 percent
wrong. To argue that we must continue
developing new nuclear power
plants in order to maintain our society's
efforts to protect ourselves from the
nuclear waste is irrational. Her argument
is akin to saying that we must regularly
infect people with bubonic plague; otherwise,
our doctors and nurses will forget
how to treat it. Her tone suggests hopelessness
and futility in trying to kill the
nuclear monster, yet I take great solace in
the fact that grassroots democratic opposition
has held it at bay despite the billions
spent in promoting it.
Fundamentally, we have no right to
curse our descendants with thousands of
years of cancer and birth defects for the
most fleeting of benefits, electricity. This
fact will not change, and people who realize
this will continue to fight nuclear
expansion, even if writers like Dewar
resign themselves to it.
Joseph DeMare
Alden, New York
The ending of this article presumes
that Ph.D. nuclear physicists
will be needed to guard the nuclear wastes.
Not so. What we will need is a new cadre
of professionals whose main concern is
protecting and safeguarding populations of
living things from the dangers of
radioactive materials, and embracing that
task as their sole professional responsibility.
Their training will be focused, in large
part, on the biological and environmental
sciences, rather than just the physical and
engineering sciences that have dominated
the nuclear enterprise until now.
Gordon Edwards, Ph.D.
President, Canadian Coalition
for Nuclear Responsibility
Montréal
Elaine Dewar is to be commended
for writing an informative history of
the Canadian nuclear industry.
Unfortunately, one very important issue
was not explored. This is the crucial question
of the future fitness-for-service of
CANDU reactors currently licensed to operate
in Canada, especially those at
Pickering and Bruce.
As a result of some bad engineering
decisions by Atomic Energy of Canada
Ltd., the designer of the CANDU reactor,
inappropriate materials were selected for a
number of crucial reactor components,
such as feeder pipes, radiation shielding
sleeves, fuel-bearing-pad braze and pressure
tubes. In some cases, incipient problems
with components were exacerbated
by poor operating procedures on the part
of the owners — Ontario Power
Generation (OPG), Hydro-Québec and
New Brunswick Power.
Now, after many years of operation of
these reactors, more and more inspections
are revealing instances of severe corrosion,
with associated material degradation or
wastage, to the point where replacement
of all the affected components will be necessary
for the continued safe operation of
these reactors.
In essence, Dewar's article appears to
be suggesting that the only practical
solution to Ontario's electrical energy
future is nuclear power based on homegrown
nuclear reactors. I could not disagree
more!
It is evident, given the present state of
uncertainty and complexity in the electricity
industry in Canada, that no one has a
quick fix for our energy problems, particularly
when it comes to nuclear generation.
However, as a 25-year veteran of
OPG's battles with defective pressure
tubes and feeder pipes at Pickering, Bruce
and Darlington, I would humbly suggest
that we should give serious consideration
to the following:
First and foremost, OPG should abandon all efforts to restart any more
units at Pickering and Bruce. Units 1, 2
and 3 at these stations are in even worse
shape than the recently restarted Unit 4,
and all Pickering and Bruce units are
facing the need for expensive feeder-pipe
and/or pressure-tube replacements in the
near future.
Second, Ontario should keep its coal-
fired power stations running as an interim
measure to get us through the present
energy crisis. This may mean even more
reliance on coal in the short term, but it is
clear that we really have no other choice.
As an aside to the environmentalists
who abhor the very existence of
Nanticoke, Lakeview and such coal plants,
I would point out that while Ontario consumes
about 14 million tonnes of coal to
produce 40 percent of its electricity, the
United States consumes 988 million
tonnes of coal to generate 52 percent of its
electric power. If greenhouse-gas emissions
really are a concern for Ontario, let's not
forget that transportation and industrial
carbon-dioxide emissions in Ontario are
more than double those from coal-fired
power stations.
Public utilities such as OPG should
purchase proven medium-sized light
water reactors from European or
American manufacturers to be commissioned
within five years at existing
nuclear sites. This, of course, represents a
radical departure from the traditional
buy-Canadian approach but is not without
precedent in the world of engineering.
The British abandoned their muchcherished
advance gas reactors in favour
of better American technology. And even
the Americans are willing to hitch a ride
on Russian rockets to get their astronauts
to the international space station
F. R. Greening
Former Senior Research Scientist, OPG
Hamilton, Ont.
While Elaine Dewar is concerned
about some hypothetical
low-level risk from stored nuclear waste
a million years in the future, she ignores
the immediate threat from climate
change and the fact that the burning of
the world's coal, oil and natural gas is
depriving future generations of that
legacy. After 500 years, nuclear waste,
whether in the form of used ceramic fuel
elements or "real" waste from the reprocessing of used fuel bundles into fresh
new fuel, can be handled without protection
from external radiation. The
long-term management concern is not
with external radiation but with the very
unlikely possibility of getting long-lived
isotopes, like the plutonium that is
bonded with other waste into a special
glass, into the lungs, and even this is not
necessarily fatal. There are much more
toxic materials than nuclear waste being
discarded into the environment every
day without the hysteria that accompanies
the word nuclear.
Without Canada's 17 operating
nuclear power reactors, we would
increase greenhouse-gas emissions by 85
million tonnes a year from coal-fired
plants or 45 million tonnes from naturalgas-
burning plants. Ontario's 15 nuclear
units operated last year with an average
capacity factor of more than 79 percent,
which is less than the average of over 90
percent from the 104 reactors in the
United States, so this will be the target
for Ontario to aim for. The 10 reactors
built by AECL in New Brunswick,
Quebec, China, South Korea, Argentina
and Romania operated last year with an
average capacity factor of more than 89
percent, for a lifetime average of over 87
percent, an excellent performance.
We should remember that when
Darlington was built in the early 1990s,
there were no large natural-gas-burning
combined-cycle gas-turbine generating
units like we have today. Back then, the
alternatives to nuclear would have been
burning coal or burning natural gas in
vast quantities in boilers of low thermal
efficiency, producing over 17 million
tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. The
same people who are supporting burning
gas today, despite scarcity, high cost, pollution
and greenhouse-gas emissions,
supported burning gas in Darlington
back then.
As Lester Thurow of MIT, one of the
world's leading economists, said about
environmentalists in a 2001 USA Today
article supporting nuclear-generated
electricity, "They don't like global warming,
and they don't like nuclear power.
But if they want to prevent global warming,
they are going to have to embrace
nuclear power."
Donald Jones
Mississauga, Ont.
Canadian Geographic and Elaine
Dewar are to be congratulated for
this article. In 1987, the Administrative
Law Journal published an article by me
which concluded, for much the same
profound reasons as your piece, that
"steps must be taken toward the
inevitable, a withdrawal from the
nuclear fuel cycle. There are contracts
for the peddling of plutonium to be broken,
reactors to be shut down and
decommissioned and millions of tonnes
of waste to be managed. Although this
would require study, all of the skilled
nuclear technologists, miners and other
nuclear employees could surely be
employed in creating a Canadian
decommissioning and waste-management
technology that could be exported
to the world and in exploring possibilities
for other energy technologies.
Managing and regulating Canada's
nuclear fuel cycle-become-legacy would
be a monumental task, even without
further proliferation or multiplication. It
will require high levels of social and
political stability and vigilance, effectively
forever — even if the atom can be
brought and kept under control and
peaceful."
The dichotomy of greenhouse (fossil
fuel) or nuclear electricity generation is
false. The real choice facing the human
race is survival or not. Fossil-fuel-based
and nuclear electricity generation both
ultimately represent not.
Andrew Orkin
Hamilton, Ont.
Down the wrong river
"The carbon decade: Stagnation"
(CG May/June 2005) mistakenly
says that the Winnipeg River flooded in
1997, when, in fact, it was the Red
River, which runs through southern
Manitoba and Winnipeg. It was called a
few things: the Flood of the Century,
and the Red Sea Rising.
There is a Winnipeg River in
Manitoba, but it was not what flooded
in 1997.
Shirley Haynes
Winnipeg
Comments related to the Voisey's Bay
development on the north coast of Labrador have no foundation in fact. The
mine and concentrator being developed at
Voisey's Bay underwent one of the most
comprehensive environmental assessments
in Canadian mining history. Aboriginal
stakeholders played a very active and
important role during the environmental
assessment. Indeed, the Innu Nation and
the Labrador Inuit Association (LIA),
along with the federal and provincial governments,
signed a memorandum of
understanding that developed the terms
of reference for the environmental assessment
process. A key recommendation was
that the impact and benefits agreement be
negotiated with the Innu Nation and the
LIA. Those agreements were finalized in
2002 and ratified by the LIA and by a
significant majority of the members of the
Innu Nation before construction of the
mine and concentrator began.
Phil du Toit
Managing Director,
Voisey's Bay Nickel Company
St. John's
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On behalf of the Mining
Association of Canada (MAC),
I wish to express my disappointment
regarding the description of Canada's
mining industry in the article "The carbon
decade: Stagnation" (CG May/June
2005). Contrary to what was written,
mining is, in fact, one of the most heavily
regulated industries in the country.
Whether it is health and safety, releases to
water and air, environmental assessment
or land disturbance affecting species at
risk, the mining industry's activities are
closely scrutinized externally as well as
from within.
The article states that "no other
resource sector has fought harder against
the environmental regulations ." but
no example is provided. The reality is
that MAC plays an active role on behalf
of its members in the development of
effective public policy that governs our
industry. We work with other stakeholders,
including environmental groups, at
times advocating positions beyond where
government and some other industry
sectors have wanted to go. MAC played a
critical role in the establishment of the
National Orphaned/Abandoned Mines
Initiative. Most recently, MAC was the
only industry association to publicly express support for the government's
decision to regulate climate change
under the Canadian Environmental
Protection Act. It is this behaviour, consistent
with the philosophy behind
MAC's Towards Sustainable Mining initiative,
that just recently earned MAC
the prestigious Globe Industry
Association Award for Environmental
Performance.
The article also absurdly states that
our industry operates no differently
today than it did a century ago. The
millions of dollars invested in research in
and treatment of acid rock drainage, the
billions invested in the capturing of sulphur
dioxide, the significant decreases in
releases (mercury releases from mining
in Canada have declined by 94 percent
since 1988), the multidisciplinary
research MAC is co-funding with the
Canadian Network of Toxicology
Centres into the behaviour of metals in
the natural environment, new
hydrometallurgical research — these are
just some examples of our environmental
progress and our commitment to
environmental stewardship.
Gordon Peeling
Mining Association of Canada
Ottawa
Source control
The comments on sewage disposal
in Victoria ("The carbon decade:
Stagnation" CG May/June
2005) need a
response. Victoria's Core Area Liquid
Waste Management Plan, approved by
the province in 2003, contains commitments
to upgrade the existing level of
sewage treatment, including scientifically
determined environmental "triggers,"
which, once reached, will require implementation
of a higher level of treatment
within a period of three years.
A key component of the plan is the
capital region's ongoing commitment to
reducing at the source the discharge of
sewage contaminants from businesses,
institutions and residences. A recent
independent five-year review showed
that the Regional Source Control
Program, in place since 1995, has been
extremely successful in reducing the
levels of a range of waste-water contaminants
discharged into marine waters off Victoria. Over the past seven years, a dramatic
70 percent decrease in mercury has
been achieved, along with reductions,
ranging from 36 percent to 63 percent,
in several other contaminants. These
reductions are notable because they are
of a similar magnitude to those attained
by some large North American cities
that have had source-control programs
in place for several decades.
Trevor Smyth
Supervisor
Regional Source Control Program,
Capital Regional District
Victoria
Repair rejuvenation
I was reading the supplement that
came with the magazine ("Canadian
Environment Awards," CG May/June
2005) when it struck me that no one has
addressed the issue of disposability. By
that I mean the availability of goods
which are cheaper to replace than to
repair. There was a time when if the kettle
went on the blink, you put in a new
plug or cord or element. Today, you can
buy a new electric kettle for as little as
eight dollars. Any one of the replacement
parts cited above will cost as much
as, if not more than, the kettle. Then
there is the cost of labour to repair the
item if you are not able to do it yourself.
I work in a hardware store and see on
a daily basis how many kettles and toasters
and other small appliances are being
purchased to replace others that have
stopped working. Of course, many of
these small appliances are not repairable,
as the working parts are sealed in plastic
and not accessible after assembly. How
many tonnes of plastic and metal are
being buried in our landfills because it is
cheaper to make disposable items?
I know it would make appliances
more expensive for the consumer to purchase,
but can we afford to keep filling
our landfills (or Michigan's) just because
we are too lazy to repair our broken
equipment? I won't even get on the subject
of children's toys. It might require
legislation to force our society to repair
rather than replace, but it would have an
upside — it would rejuvenate the electrical
appliance repair industry.
George Bricker
Dufferin County, Ont.
REVERBERATIONS ONLINE
Nuclear reaction
Elaine Dewar's article "Nuclear Resurrection" (May/June 2005) provides an interesting outsider's
view of a crucial industry that Canadians know little about, but unfortunately leaves
the waters muddier than before she waded in.
Canada's wartime introduction to nuclear energy is fascinating history, but irrelevant
to the ebb and flow of the present industry. Today's dynamic is a politicized struggle
of economics and environmental realities, and a widespread public apprehension rooted in
mushroom-cloud fears and ineffective communication.
Canadians need to know, for example, that this country's nuclear industry makes
back its total historic R&D public investment in annual economic activity. Unfortunately,
Ms. Dewar quotes, without reference, an anti-nuclear activist's figure of $17.5 billion
in public money over five decades, a number that has been inflation-adjusted by a factor
of at three and overlooks the "benefit" part of any shrewd investor's cost-benefit analysis.
Active support of a large-scale energy technology with no air emissions is an ethical
and necessary role for government, and this is certainly not the kind of "political interference"
I am quoted as opposing. Rather, this is a time for concerted action by our leaders.
Most unfortunate is Dewar's cynical conclusion that nuclear technology should be
supported, if only to provide the brains to keep nuclear waste from visiting doom upon
future generations. This ignores the essence of Canada's geologic nuclear waste
technology, which is to isolate the material in perpetuity without institutional
intervention. In this we are guided by Nature itself, which, as any frustrated uranium
prospector will tell you, has been doing just this with similar material for millions of years.
Jeremy Whitlock, PhD
Reactor Physicist, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
Past President, Canadian Nuclear Society
top
I have just finished reading the Nuclear Reaction spotlight in your
current edition of Canadian Geographic. I found some points very
interesting and informative.
As a nuclear energy worker I have insight into the
business that your average reader may not. To the average person a nuclear reactor brings
visions of Chernobyl, this is far from reality. Facilities are run by teams of competent
professionals who make decisions that protect the public and environment. These
decisions are not always in the best interest of production and as a result millions
of dollars in lost revenue occur.
When I was reading your article I found it
interesting that your magazine contains various ads for automobiles, which are another
source of pollution and add to the greenhouse effect. There seems to be a conflict there.
Nuclear generation is emission free.
I have no doubt that a safe and responsible
method of storing the spent fuel from these operating reactors will be developed as this
seems to be one issue that the government is committed to.
R. McIntosh
Kincardine, Ont.
I found Elaine Dewar's article to be informative in many ways, but I was still left with the
impression that she is more than just concerned about aspects of the issues involved.
There is a strong impression of
"nuclear-as-a-bad-thing" in her work and in this regard you have
disappointed me. I had hoped for an unbiased appraisal and I don't think I got one.
Richard W. Booy
Please tell Ms. Dewar that the world does have a serious energy crisis and that nuclear
energy along with renewable alternatives, clean coal, and conservation will hopefully be our salvation.
If Canada's National Energy Board says we have a 60-year supply of natural gas, why are our natural
gas energy suppliers considering at least four or five LNG terminals to import off-shore gas at
horrendous prices — and with huge environmental risks? Natural gas is currently priced at
over $7 per thousand cu. ft. — at least three times what it cost just two years ago —
and Ms. Dewar proposes this as a fuel for Ontario's electricity requirements growing at the rate
of 100 MW per year !
John Gurnham
Author Elaine Dewar began her article with "Nuclear power is a child of war", yet
omitted mentioning the many other civilian technologies that were discovered or significantly
developed because of military requirements — electronics, radar, computers, ships, turbines,
rocketry, jet engines, aircraft, petrochemicals and even medical procedures. The first
nuclear reactor started up during World War II, only because of the non-military
pre-war history of experimental and theoretical physics performed by people like
Roentgen (x-rays), Becquerel (radioactivity), Curie, Einstein, Rutherford, Geiger,
Soddy, de Hevesy (nuclear medicine), Fermi and Meitner (theory of fission), to name
a very few. And, like the above-mentioned technologies, nuclear science and engineering
has developed well beyond its military applications.
Dewar's inauspicious beginning set the tone for the article, a scathing
opinion piece reflecting a lack of objectivity or balance of facts.
Which organizations was she referring to when she said, "Regulators had tried and failed to
police it [the nuclear industry]"? If she had seen even a small portion of the effort
expended in meeting the licensing requirements of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission,
she could not have made such a comment.
The claim that AECL has received $17.5 billion in subsidies was not
referenced because it came from the anti-nuclear industry. Nor was
there any statement of the benefits, such as the total production of Canadian nuclear-generated
electricity being worth $82 billion at today's prices, or the made-in-Canada nuclear medical treatments.
Why did Jodi Di Menna unquestioningly quote the glib and sound-bite friendly statements of the
professional anti-nuclear activists? What about questioning their sources, their evidence,
and their livelihoods?
Even the CG website mirrored the lack of objectivity, with reference to
Ontario confronting "its energy demons", and the statement "If that [the Campaign for Nuclear
Phaseout website] doesn't sway you, Energy Probe also doesn't mince any words on the subject".
Was objectivity too much to expect from the Canadian Geographic? Yes.
Morgan Brown
Volunteer webmaster for the Canadian Nuclear Society
Deep River, Ont.
I recently finished my second year as an Environmental Science & Physical Geography
student at Nipissing University, North Bay, ON. I am also an avid Canadian Geographic reader.
Considering my field of study, I especially enjoyed this past issue, the annual
environmental issue. A hot topic in my classes this year was sustainable energy.
The article Nuclear Resurrection was one that I wish I could share with my peers.
Nuclear energy seems to spark a great deal of reaction from them. Although, the
entire issue was very well done, and a great read. I will gladly pass it on for
others to enjoy.
Laura Allen
Orillia, Ont.
I just read your article on Nuclear power.
Why don't we place a large controlled
mirror in space to shine the sun on different areas of North America during nighttime?
The savings in power, in New York city alone, would be hundreds of millions of dollars
and the long nights of winter could be reduced. Save on heating also.
David Dawe
We're grateful to you and writer Elaine Dewar for her eloquent essay on the abysmal
financial history of nuclear power in Canada. Dewar's analysis gives readers a clear
understanding of how billions of taxpayer dollars have disappeared down this gleaming
stainless steel rathole.
She also makes it clear that reassuring claims about the safety record of Canada's nukes
cannot be trusted. CNSC (the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission), the "watchdog"
charged with assuring the safety of this Rube Goldberg method of boiling water,
is distracted by their primary duty, which is promoting nuclear power. Less biased
observers, including the World Association of Nuclear Operators reviewers cited in
Dewar's article, don't share CNSC's Pollyanna outlook.
Larry Lack and Lee Ann Ward
St. Andrews, N.B.
Elaine Dewar is to be congratulated on her well-researched and comprehensive
"Nuclear Reaction" essay.
Add to the $38 Billion provincial nuclear debt another $17
Billion of AECL's federal taxpayers' subsidies, and the handouts to this 50-year-old industry
doesn't end there. The Nuclear Liability Act, enacted almost 30 years ago and never amended,
caps liability for nuclear accidents at a laughable $75 million. The taxpayers again pick up
the bulk of the tab!
Bruce Power's profitable business comes thanks to OPG, our provincially owned utility's
generosity. It volunteered to look after all their nuclear waste — a subsidy in the
Billions. It also handed long-term high-priced contracts to Bruce Power, on which
UNECAN NEWS, an industry paper commented (Vol.13,#7,July 31,2003)
"[T]he government of Ontario has decided that the taxpayers, corporate
and private, will be putting up the cash to pay for these high profits."
And an industry calling itself 'The Solution to Climate Change' should
come clean by revealing where its fuel is coming from. Elaine surely knows about
the dirty business of uranium mining in Northern Saskatchewan — the mining,
milling, refining and transportation of the fuel emits tons of Greenhouse Gases
until it goes into the reactors!!
Thank you for sharing this with your readers.
S. (Ziggy) Kleinau
Coordinator, Citizens for Renewable Energy
Lion's Head, Ont.
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Thanks for the overview of the state of nuclear power.
Every time I visit Halifax and Trenton, Nova Scotia, the smoke stacks of Nova
Scotia Power's generating plants remind me that we are predominantly dependent
upon coal for our electrical requirements. And even in an area that has been
devastated by acid rain we, like Alberta, send our natural gas to the U.S. for
economic reasons.
I noticed that there was very little mention of the problem of nuclear waste
disposal until the very end of the article, the answer to which I was eagerly
awaiting. It never came, just a rehash of the old solutions. Will this be a
topic for future articles? I surely hope so. Since the original nuclear elements
are concentrations of naturally occurring elements in the environment, why we don't
dissolve and dilute them and then reintroduce them to the environment? Has this been explored?
Hugh MacLeod
Truro, N.S.
Elaine Dewar's prejudiced sensationalism in her article on "Nuclear Resurrection"
(CG May/June 2005) is inappropriate for a journal with the stature of
Canadian Geographic.
John Keeler
Owen Sound, Ont.
Your recent rant by Ms. Dewar on nuclear energy in Ontario reflected very poorly on your publication.
I do not question giving editorial space to a nuclear-phobic. However, it is surely
your responsibility to provide a balanced perspective by including equal space
on the other side of the question. The bottom line is quite simple. While screaming
at the nuclear option is very self satisfying to some people, not one of them is
prepared to propose a superior, practical alternative; I never expected Canadian
Geographic to fall into this camp.
Dick Patterson
Elaine Dewar's article on nuclear reaction is a highly one-sided view of the nuclear industry.
Nuclear power produces the least greenhouse gases (construction of the plants being the main emissions),
nuclear power creates high paying jobs, and nuclear power does not alter the landscape
besides the actual plant.
If you look at other renewable green energy, there are negatives to all of them.
Hydro-electric dams flood a whole ecosystem and forever change the dynamics of the
river and wildlife that rely that river. Wind energy is a great source of energy. But
the right wind is needed to produce the electricity, so there is the possibility of
having no power generated on very high winds or very low winds. Wind can be a great
way to supplement power generation, but it cannot be sole resource for generation.
Solar technology is just not very feasible in Canada and Ontario. Lack of constant
sunshine in our climate does not make solar power very efficient way of creating power
(until solar panels technology grows). Where does this leave us?
Nuclear technology.
CANDU reactors are Canadian made and uranium is Canadian mined.
The past is something the nuclear industry has learned from. The fact is
that nuclear technology will not be leaving anytime soon and it is time
to stop being negative and promote condescending view of the industry and
start realizing nuclear technology is the best option for power generation
Ed Melcher
Port Elgin, Ont.
As a recent engineering graduate (UNB 2004) who sought out and found employment in the nuclear
industry and is currently setting up a Toronto/ Durham branch of North American
Young Generation in Nuclear (an organization whose intent is to promote and
educate on the beneficial nature of peaceful nuclear science and technology),
I was extremely excited to see the large atom on the cover of your May/June issue.
My excitement quickly turned to disillusionment. While I thank author Elaine
Dewar for taking the time to get at least part of the nuclear story, I couldn't
help but notice the spin that was put into the article, even if it is subtler
than most of what I read.
The first paragraph actually shocked me. True, the technology
was developed as part of the war effort. So were the jet engine,
the helicopter, penicillin and other antibiotics, as well as the computers
this magazine is written on. George W. Bush isn't the only high profile
supporter of nuclear power. Why not mention the left-end supporters.
Chief among them is Professor James Lovelock, creator of the famed Gaia Hypotheses.
Also prominent is Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore.
The environmental aspect is what attracted me to the study of nuclear engineering.
As a left-leaning, environmentally conscious student with an aptitude for science,
what else was I supposed to do? It literally baffles me how "green" organizations
argue for natural gas. Sure it's cleaner than coal, but it still emits 50-66% as
much greenhouse gases and air pollution. Nuclear power emits virtually none of
these poisons.
We know how to safely store nuclear waste. We've been doing it since the
1940s! We've also been able to show that deep geological disposal is a
technically sound way to dispose of spent fuel. This is not just burying
waste. It is storing it in highly engineered containers inside highly
engineered underground facilities with around a dozen barriers between
the fuel and the environment.
It seems everybody in the article (including Minister Duncan) was bashing
CANDU performance. Certainly they have had troubles along the way but in
the 1970s and '80s, when the U.S. nuclear industry was floundering, CANDUs
were on top of the world. Unfortunately this created a sense of confidence
in the managers of the day. That shouldn't however underscore the success
that these plants have had in the past and can have in the future.
A letter, or even a magazine article, is not enough room to fully explain
the benefits of nuclear power. It is not nearly enough to counter all the
anti-nuclear dogma that has been perpetuated for decades.
Andrew Daley
Toronto, Ont.
If you would like to contribute to this discussion, please see our suvey,
"Nuclear reactions."
* Letters may be edited for length, accuracy and liability.
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