The Nuclear Agenda

What is the nuclear industry proposing for Alberta?

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a federal crown corporation, originally signed an agreement with a local firm, calling itself Energy Alberta Corporation (EAC), to develop nuclear power in Alberta. On August 28th, 2007, EAC filed a site location application with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to build twin 1100 megawatt, ACR-1000 nuclear reactors, currently existing as no more than an incomplete design on paper. Then in December 2007, Bruce Power, a private nuclear operator from Ontario, bought out EAC. Bruce Power has now essentially doubled the size of the proposed nuclear development, having recently filed a site license application for up to four nuclear reactors and up to 4400 megawatts of power. This is more power than produced by either the Pickering or Darlington nuclear stations in Ontario.

The players have changed slightly, but the proposal remains essentially the same. What is still being proposed is to build oversized, first-of-their-kind reactors with Albertans serving as guinea pigs. Several international companies are bidding on the project , but the most likely builder will be AECL, a Canadian crown corporation that only manages to survive due to millions of dollars in subsidies paid for by taxpayers. All companies are looking at building new technology, what they are calling "third generation reactors."

AECL's proposed design is the ACR-1000, a larger version of the ACR-700 originally proposed for Alberta. Even though the 700 megawatt version of this new design has never been built, the proponents now want to build the larger ACR-1000, pushing the power level beyond that of any nuclear plant ever built in Canada, with a reactor more than twice the size of those at Pickering, Ontario. The developers have proposed to use these experimental reactors to produce the steam needed to extract bitumen from the oil sands, and also generate electricity, more electricity than Alberta needs. Does Alberta need all this power?

Duncan Hawthorne, CEO of Bruce Power, admits that "the Alberta residential marketplace alone will not support the plant." What then will Alberta do with all this excessive electricity? The answer may lie with one of Bruce Power's major partners, TransCanada Corp. The corporation's Celilo project proposes to build transmission lines linking northern Alberta to California with one of the sources of the power being "other developing forms of generation" such as nuclear. California has a moratorium on nuclear power, so why not have Albertans take on all the risks, while the Americans benefit from the energy? This would also save them a lot of water. It all makes a lot of sense, but not for Albertans.

Is using nuclear to extract bitumen from the oil sands really feasible?

A little publicized report from the Standing Committee on Natural Resources dated March 2007 concluded that "classic nuclear plants are too big for oil sands development and that smaller plants would have to be considered, in the order of 100 megawatts." The oversized reactors being proposed by AECL and its competitors would clearly not be able to do the job, and the smaller technology does not exist.

Peace River is just the start

The original business plan, put forward by Energy Alberta Corporation, was to build as many as 13 ACR-1000 nuclear reactors in Alberta. Similarly, Bruce Power has stated that the Peace River region reactors are "just the start." Duncan Hawthorne, Bruce Power's CEO, has admitted that the company has a "very aggressive growth program." The nuclear industry is coming into our province looking for opportunities for some very extensive nuclear expansion.

The plan is to have the first nuclear plant in operation by 2016. While the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission makes the decisions from a technical and safety point of view, the provincial government must also agree to accept the proposal. Unless Albertans speak up, our province will soon be a major player in the nuclear industry in North America and world-wide.

What about other proponents such as France's AREVA? Are their nuclear reactors safer? Westinghouse's new pressurized-water AP1000 nuclear plant design, just like the Canadian ACR-1000, has yet to be built anywhere in the world, its safety untested. The French nuclear company, Areva, has also been courting Alberta. This same company has recently been criticized by French regulators for a number of "serious infractions" in the construction of a nuclear reactor in northern France including cracks in its concrete base, an essential barrier for containing radiation. Areva is also building a third generation reactor in Finland. This project has run into delays because of technical difficulties and quality problems, as well as incurring cost overruns totaling 1.5 billion euros, so far. With the current shortage of skilled workers in Alberta, odds are high that quality control and cost overruns will emerge in building any nuclear reactor in this province, particular one that has never been built before. The real problem with nuclear power is that like anything produced by humans it will have flaws. And given the devastating impact that a nuclear accident would have, nuclear only makes sense if it is designed and built by other than mere mortals.

Global Nuclear Partnership

In November of this year, the Harper government signed up to join the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), an international partnership led by the United States whose purpose is to expand the development of nuclear power world-wide. The group wants to have countries that export uranium take back the radioactive nuclear   waste.   The new ACR reactors being proposed here in Canada would make the process even easier as they use spent fuel from light water reactors, such as the ones used in the United States. 

The GNEP has plans to build the world’s largest reprocessing facility capable of handling 2000 to 3000 tons of reactor fuel a year.  The public relations arm of this organization has started to use the term “recycling” instead of “reprocessing” which is a completely misleading because ‘reprocessing” is just the separation of the used fuel into various types of waste.  It does not eliminate the problem of nuclear waste, nor provide a solution as to how to dispose and store the waste. 

The Union of Concerned Scientists explain that after reprocessing “the total volume of nuclear waste will have been increased by a factor of twenty or more, including low-level waste and plutonium-contaminated waste.”

Dave Martin, energy co-ordinator for Greenpeace Canada, had this to say about reprocessing:  “It’s very expensive and very messy, and produces a large volume of highly radioactive liquid and acidic waste.  From an environmental standpoint, it’s extremely problematic.”  

Finally, reprocessing separates plutonium from the spent fuel, making it easier for terrorists to obtain the material they need to develop nuclear weapons.

With Canada now a partner in this international nuclear collaboration, using spent fuel from other countries suddenly is high on the agenda.  By becoming a significant producer of nuclear energy, and with a nuclear reactor that can use spent fuel (ACR-1000), Alberta may very well end up becoming the recipient of nuclear waste from other countries, with all the associated risks including the transportation through the province of the highly radioactive nuclear waste.