The Parkland Institute

Environment

Nuclear energy for Alberta: Whose idea?

There are only two things in Alberta politics of which I am certain: Energy Minister Mel Knight will keep his word to present Alberta’s policy on nuclear energy by the end of the year and, regardless of public input to the contrary, he will announce that nuclear power is the right fit for the province.

During the 2006 Conservative leadership campaign, Premier Ed Stelmach was asked if he believed the pace of oil sands development should be slowed. He replied that it’s not the government’s job to slow the pace of oil sands development. “The various companies making investments in Alberta will monitor cost estimates to make development decisions,” he told an Edmonton Journal reporter. Stelmach also said he was open to studying whether nuclear power was a right fit for the province.

Surely he knew that a few months earlier, Calgary’s Energy Alberta Corporation (EAC) had signed a two-year exclusive deal with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a federal crown corporation, to sell the Candu reactor and the concept of nuclear power to oilsands companies in Alberta.

The nuclear power debate had already begun in letters to Alberta dailies. Over three years, papers ran frequent letters from pro-nuclear figures like Colin Hunt, director of research and publications for Canadian Nuclear Association, and Don Peterson of the Canadian Society for Senior Engineers, and anti-nuclear activists like Bill Stollery.

On May 3, 2007, two days before the Tories cast their ballot for a potential nuclear future for Alberta at their annual convention, EAC and AECL gave a private presentation to Alberta Conservative MLAs. “There was no sales pitch,” Mel Knight told media, noting that a report from the United-Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due out the same day was expected to recommend using nuclear power to curb greenhouse gas emissions. “When that body declares that this is perhaps the way forward for the world, we can’t put on blinders and just pretend it’s not happening,” he added.

Liberal Leader Kevin Taft expressed alarm that EAC was already at the application stage, before the provincial government had gauged Albertans’ comfort level with having Western Canada’s first reactor. “It feels like the Tories have let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, and not bothered to tell the public about it,” he told the Edmonton Journal.

The same May weekend, EAC flew Whitecourt leaders to visit New Brunswick’s Point Lepreau Candu reactor. Whitecourt mayor Trevor Thain fully endorsed the project. In August 2007, Whitecourt dissenters held an alternative information session with Parkland’s Alison Jamison and Heinz-Jurgen Peter. EAC chose Peace River for its first nuclear reactor but Thain continued organizing pro-nuclear information sessions so the people of Whitecourt could “get good, solid information on the issues.”

Late in August 2007, EAC president Henuset announced in Peace River that Alberta’s first nuclear plant would be built at Lac Cardinal, 10 km upwind from Grimshaw and 30 km west of Peace River, on 15 quarter sections purchased from local farmers. The organization also filed a site location application with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to build twin 1100-megawatt ACR-1000 nuclear reactors. The ACR-1000, over twice the size of the Pickering reactors, is a third generation Candu reactor, still in the designing stage. EAC planned to build 13 ACR-1000 nuclear reactors in Alberta.

Henuset revealed that 70 per cent of the electricity produced by the Peace River plant would be sold to an unidentified customer. A month later, he backtracked, saying there were as many as eight confidentiality agreements.

The Peace River area hosts the province’s largest untapped oil sands reserves. Too deep to be mined in open pits, the bitumen will be recovered with steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), a process that consumes lots of energy and water and is fraught with serious environmental unknowns. But for Henuset, using nuclear power to boil water is the way to green up the growth plan. “We are proud to be pioneers in bringing the benefits of clean, safe, reliable nuclear power to Alberta,” he declared to the media.

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EAC took a group of about 30 Peace River residents to the Bruce Power nuclear facility on the shores of Lake Huron in Ontario. Not all Peace residents liked the plan. Some claimed their municipal politicians made deals with EAC behind their backs. Some joined the Peace River Environmental Society campaign.

Edmonton Journal editorial writers responded critically to the “breathless unveiling” of the Peace River area as EAC’s chosen site, urging Premier Stelmach’s “congenitally noncommittal” government (as Sheila Pratt put it) to take a position on whether nuclear energy is a good idea for our province.

Peace River residents were very upset to discover drilling on the EAC land on the northwest corner of Lac Cardinal in November 2007. A week later, EAC sold out to Bruce Power, a private nuclear operator from Ontario. Bruce Power acquired the exclusive rights to use AECL Candu technology in Alberta and promptly doubled the size of the proposed nuclear development, upping the site license application to four reactors and 4400 MW. Most likely the builder will be AECL, a crown corporation dependent on millions in subsidies from Canadian taxpayers. Is TransCanada Corporation, a majority owner of Ontario’s Bruce nuclear-power facility, planning to build transmission lines to ship electricity to California, where nuclear energy is banned? No plan is too crazy! Another major partner of Bruce Power is Cameco Corp. the world’s largest investor-owned uranium mining firm.

The new owners encountered stiff resistance in Peace River but the CEO of Bruce Power, Duncan Hawthorne, used humour and a jovial manner at community meetings held in Grimshaw, Manning, Peace River and Fairview. Spotlight Strategies, the consulting company of Randy Dawson, a former Conservative campaign manager, was hired to lobby for Bruce Power. A number of municipal leaders, who supported the nuclear power proposal, including the mayor, were defeated in the municipal election.

In March 2008. Bruce Power announced it had completed the purchase of EAC and filed a new site license application with CNSC. Press conferences were held in Peace River, Manning and Grimshaw. “The next three years will be about talking to the people who actually live and work in Peace Country. I know there are many voices in the nuclear debate and it’s important that all of them are heard. But it’s clear that most people want fact-based information to answer the many good questions they have. As I have said many times, having an informed and supportive host community is absolutely vital in the process,” assured Hawthorne.

A year later, the site for the proposed plant changed from Lac Cardinal to Whitemud, 30-km north of Peace River. In addition to being located on the Grimshaw aquifer, Lac Cardinal is on migratory bird routes and a waterfowl-nesting site, as well as a traditional meeting area for First Nations. The Whitemud site is close to its water source, the Peace River.

Expert panel and consultation

On May 5, 2007, grassroots Tories endorsed a plan to have the government strike a committee to study and make recommendations on nuclear power. There were plenty of assurances that the public would have many chances to have input on the proposal. Premier Stelmach hedged when asked if he was in favour of nuclear power in Alberta, but promised to “involve all Albertans through public discussion to see if that’s the direction we want to go in. This is a very important decision that the next generation and generation after that will live with.”

Almost a year later, on March 13, 2008, Bruce Power announced it had completed its deal to buy the assets of EAC relating to nuclear power plant development.
The same day, Premier Stelmach, asked about the panel of experts slated to produce a report, confessed the government hadn’t finished putting the panel together: “A lot of the experts … are not necessarily those that are living just down the block. They’re in different parts of the world,” he told the Edmonton Journal.

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The announcement of the expert panel came 10 days later: three members from Alberta and the fourth from Ontario. With a past president of a nuclear lobby group, a board member of AECL, a former Conservative MP closely allied with pro-nuclear Conservatives including Stephen Harper (whose throne speech in November 2008 stated “nuclear energy is a proven technology, capable of reliable, large-scale output”), the panel was neither comprehensive nor balanced. Worse yet, the Idaho National Laboratory, in the business of developing and promoting nuclear power, was commissioned to prepare this “unbiased compilation.”

A month earlier, the Alberta Research Council (ARC) and the U.S. Energy Department’s main nuclear laboratory had signed a co-operational agreement to investigate potential use of electricity, heat and chemical byproducts produced by the proposed reactors north of Edmonton. Idaho National Laboratory has 53 reactors on its 2,200 sq-km site near the Canadian border. The U.S. agreement to work with ARC came together after Alberta Energy Minister Mel Knight visited the Idaho lab in 2007, once proposals emerged for nuclear power facilities near Peace River and Whitecourt. Both ARC and the Idaho laboratory stood to gain from a pro-nuclear Nuclear Power Expert Panel.

The Expert Panel report expected for the fall of 2008 was released on March 26, 2009. “There are those of course who have very strong feelings,” said Knight. “We have to make sure that all Albertans, whether they have strong feelings or whether they’re just interested in what we’re doing here, we want to make sure all Albertans have their questions and concerns answered.”

There were “strong feelings.” Most were directed at the $250,000 expert panel report and the lack of access to the “consultation.” They came from journalists, non-partisan public policy groups, environmental groups, and letters to the editor. After so much time with no information and so many promises, Albertans had nothing. It was apparent that the government didn’t care how Albertans felt.

Now in mid-September, I am panicking again. BC is nuclear-free. The three Canadian provinces with nuclear power – Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick – will testify that it hasn’t been a success. Why is it so important to declare Alberta nuclear-free? Once we let one reactor in, we will not be able to stop the flow. The most frightening aspect is the Alberta government’s lack of involvement in the nuclear debate and its poor management of the oil sands. This government cannot be trusted with such an important decision.

The more I learn about nuclear power, the more I am concerned. There are three new and disturbing things I learned as I revisited nuclear power in the last three years:

The first is not entirely new but is now definitive: radiation released from normally operating nuclear plants causes measurable increases in cancer in children living in the vicinity of nuclear power plants. A German study released late in 2007, the most comprehensive examination in this field worldwide, found that children under the age of five, living within 50 km downwind from 16 German nuclear plants, were 60-75 per cent more likely to develop cancer, and 120 per cent more susceptible to leukemia than if they lived further away. Those within five km of a nuclear facility were 2.19 times more likely to develop leukemia. Similar results were found for children living near U.S. nuclear power plants. Other studies attest to high risks to workers, even in well-functioning plants, and the inevitable release of radiation into the surrounding environment.

My second discovery concerns the ACR-1000 Candu reactor, a generation III reactor. I gather there are two main differences between this reactor and previous Candu reactors: The ACR-1000 uses enriched uranium instead of natural uranium. This means a very energetic, very expensive, very dangerous and very polluting process to enrich the uranium as well as the use of chlorofluorocarbon gas that inevitably leaks and is a potent GHG. It will also use reprocessed spent fuel and require long-distance transportation of highly dangerous plutonium.

The third finding is linked to the second. December 2007, Canada joined the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), an international partnership led by the U.S. to expand the development of nuclear power worldwide. Countries that export uranium will have to take back radioactive nuclear waste. Reprocessing or “recycling” as the Expert Panel and the nuclear industry calls it, is extremely dangerous, expensive, and polluting. It makes plutonium more accessible to bomb makers and creates an even greater volume of nuclear waste.

What can we expect from Ed Stelmach who has swallowed hook, line and sinker the greening of nuclear power? There is no reason not to be informed on nuclear power. Hopefully we’ll be inspired to act before it’s too late and we – the people of Alberta – can keep Alberta nuclear-free.

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