Remarks by Rodney Anderson FCA
President: Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy (Canada) Inc. [EFN-Canada]
Energy Forum at Lorne Park Secondary School, 
1324 Lorne Park Rd., Mississauga
7:00 pm Thursday April 6, 2006

I’m a layman, not a scientific expert. But I live on this planet and I have five grandsons who are going to be around for a lot more decades than I am — and frankly, I’m very concerned about their future. Hence my involvement in the recent formation of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy (Canada) Inc. — EFN-Canada.

Here are my concerns:

First, there’s an unacceptable risk that our continuing greenhouse gas emissions are going to destroy our civilization. I don’t mean by gradual Kyoto-style global warming but by sudden catastrophic climate change — from shutting down the Gulf Stream. Light fresh water from melting polar ice could do that. When that happens, Europe’s agriculture sustains only 10% of its population. The other 90% starve to death — not without military conflicts along the way. The NRC 2002 report to Congress, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, pointed out that such a shut-down would mimic an event that occurred 11,000 years ago in the Younger Dryas Period — and the cataclysmic change, once it begins, happens not over decades but over a 3-year period. Our finger is pushing against the light switch and there’s no dimmer. Suddenly without warning the lights go out. 

Is the science uncontentious? No. The report concedes “we do not understand abrupt climate changes well enough to predict them”. But if the smoke alarm starts ringing in your house while your children are sleeping upstairs, do you pour yourself another brandy and say “You know it just might be that that smoke alarm is defective.” Or if someone says shutting down the Gulf Stream may not be the most likely scenario — only, say, a 20% risk of occurring in the next 40 years. Would you let your children cross the highway if there was a 20% chance they wouldn’t make it to the other side? I don’t think so. So let’s stop pumping out those greenhouse gases now! With the quantities involved, nuclear generation is the only way of doing that. 

Third, we’re going to run out of oil (early on in my grandsons’ lifetimes) and probably natural gas too. We’re largely in denial on this subject — because it’s never happened before. But past personal experience is not always a reliable gauge of the future. As one of my statistics profs used to say: “Every week millions of people in the world die who never died in their lives before.” 

One of the problems is that the Saudi numbers (both reserves and production) have been secret since the 1980s. The resulting debate pits the “peak-oil pessimists” (who frankly I find persuasive) against the “cornucopians” (who say, don’t worry, we’ll find more supplies, we always have). James Howard Kunstler’s 2005 book The Long Emergency argues that we are "sleepwalking into the future", that we passed the peak in 2005 — used up 1 trillion of the 2 trillion barrels of oil the Earth once had, and, with accelerating consumption in China and India, will run out by about 2035. We had a world population of about 1 billion when we began to climb slowly towards the peak at the beginning of the industrial revolution; we now have 6-1/2 billion as we begin to skid quickly down the other side. 

What can be done about it? The main thing that could buy us a little time would be, Kunstler says, to ramp up a Project-Apollo-style program of nuclear power plant construction. 

Other persuasive evidence is presented in Matthew Simmons’ 2005 book Twilight in the Desert. 

If we’re going to wean ourselves off oil, we need to electrify our railroads, increase electrified urban transit, build walkable communities not sprawling car-consuming suburbs, use e-hybrid cars or electric cars, and maybe ultimately the hydrogen economy. Where’s all the electricity going to come from to do this? It has to be from nuclear energy.

Second issue: what can be done?
Conservation and improved energy efficiency are important and should be pursued. More efficient light bulbs produce the same amount of light using 2 to 8 times less energy. Heat pumps can produce the same amount of heat using 2 to 5 times less energy. But realistically we still need a massively available and reliable energy source to replace carbon fuels we’re dependent on today.

Wind and solar power, though expensive, are intermittent. They should be pursued aggressively but they are unlikely to make up more than, say, 15% of our demand. Even Denmark didn’t succeed in doing so, while in France nuclear energy does produce 80% of the electricity. And on top of that, wind power and solar power need back up for when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. And that back up (stand-by generating stations) has a cost too. Let’s do it by all means. But there’s no way they can replace more than a small fraction of our needs. Solar heating should be encouraged (but isn’t the best option in Canada). Geothermal power is an even more important option to explore as well. In all cases another major energy source is still needed to power our cities, our cars, our trucks and feed our civilization. Today we rely almost entirely on carbon fuels. This brings me to the third point.

Fourth point: faulty objections to nuclear:
The common objections advanced to nuclear power are that it is allegedly dangerous, unreliable, too expensive, and with unsolved waste disposal problems. I believe these perceptions are based on misinformation. I haven’t time to debate each of these points at length. I’ll briefly quote a Toronto Star letter from one of our newest EFN-Canada supporters, a Physics PhD Student at the University of Toronto, Adam McLean:

“Nuclear is safe.  Nuclear stations have reliably delivered half of Ontario's electricity demand for over 30 years without a single fatality — a feat unmatched in most large industries.”

“Nuclear is environmentally friendly.  Nuclear stations release no greenhouse gases, . . .  The stations in Ontario annually prevent emissions nearly equal to that of all the cars in Canada.”
 
“Nuclear power is affordable.  The most recent Pickering unit to be refurbished was done on time and on budget.  Six CANDUs built in South Korea, China and Romania over the past 10 year have also all been completed in record time, and on budget.  The combination of hydro and nuclear power is the reason that Ontario has enjoyed cheap power for the past 30 years.”
 
But surely it’s dangerous, I hear you say. Well as our Honorary Chair, Patrick Moore, the founder of Greenpeace, points out, “103 nuclear reactors are operating every day in the US, 442 world-wide. No serious accident since 1986. No one died as a result of a radiation-related accident in the history of the US or Canadian civilian nuclear program. 45,000 people die in automobile accidents every year in North America.”

But what about Chernobyl? Chernobyl was built without any containment structure. CANDU generating plants have a triple containment structure. Chernobyl used carbon as a moderator and, what do you know, in an accident carbon can burn. CANDU reactors use heavy water as a moderator; heavy water doesn’t burn. 

But the costs? Darlington construction ran $6.8 billion over budget. Yes, but, in fact, almost all this over-run came from government interference, stopping and starting the project as different views flip-flopped in political circles as to the economy’s direction. Thank heavens they finally completed the project or the lights would be off in Ontario today. But the lengthy government-imposed construction delays led to excessive capitalized interest of more than $5 billion.

Government interference has done other things as well. In 1992 the Ontario Government of the day, having campaigned on an anti-nuclear program, appointed a new Ontario Hydro CEO who managed to engineer the early retirement of thousands of Ontario Hydro workers including many of those who ran the nuclear generating stations. Then what happened? Nuclear stations had to be shut down because Hydro then lacked the manpower to run them and Ontario had to import dirty-coal-power electricity from the U.S. to fill the gap. Was that a smart move? And with nuclear plants sitting idle for lack of manpower, the debt escalated.

But ‘What about the unsolved problem of nuclear waste?’ The NWMO (Nuclear Waste Management Organization) recently came out with its report recommending deep geological repository. But this is the fifth report since 1978 that has recommended the same ultimate solution. How many times do we have to study the problem before we believe the answer? We simply haven’t done a good job communicating the answers to the public. 

OK, you say, but there’s still that awful radiation threat. Well no there isn’t. It is easy to protect ourselves from radiation. A simple sheet of paper like this stops the alpha radiation and just one meter of earth or concrete or a foot of lead stops most of the gamma radiation. In fact, the amount of radiation produced by the civil nuclear industry is absolutely trivial in comparison to the naturally occurring background radiation in the earth plus that occurring in the medical community (from X-Rays etc.). You will increase your radiation exposure far more by taking one airplane flight (exposing you to significantly higher cosmic ray doses) than living at the boundary of a nuclear generating station for years.

But what if a terrorist flies a suicide plane into a CANDU reactor? Well it will finish off the plane all right. But with the triple containment structure of the CANDU, it won’t do very much damage to the CANDU or expose nearby population to any significant risk. If a terrorist wants the biggest bang for the buck he should fly his suicide plane into an LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) terminal, of which dozens are now being planned for the east coast of the United States. One strategic hit at the right terminal could take out half of Boston.

Conclusion:
We will continue to need a form of energy that can be massively available now and non-greenhouse-gas-emitting. As Patrick Moore said to the US Senate Energy Committee: “Nuclear energy is the only in fact non-greenhouse gas emitting energy source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand.” A final comment by our Honorary Member, the famous British Scientist, James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia Principle: “I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy . . . .  civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear — the one safe, available, energy source — now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet." 

In closing, I want to say I honour all environmentalists: Jack Gibbons, David Suzuki, and all others. Their hearts are in the right place — which is saving the environment. Where we disagree is on the facts concerning nuclear power. But our long-term goals are the same. This is why a group of us formed EFN-Canada. We are environmentalists. Over 8,000 of us in 56 countries on 5 continents. We are new in Canada — just birthed in mid-February.  We want to make known the advantages of nuclear energy, and especially its urgently needed environmental benefits. 

Thank you.