Promoting small nuclear reactors a diversion
There are much cheaper, faster ways to produce power, Jim Harding says.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has announced he will work with Ontario and New Brunswick to bring small nuclear reactors into the energy mix “to mitigate the effects of climate change.” This is not only wishful thinking but flawed and hypocritical.
There is no demand or market for these “small” reactors; it is the industry and those who directly benefit that are promoting them. To become a viable industry these “modular” reactors would have to be mass produced and then transported elsewhere — and there would have to be some agreement on design. At present, there are more than 100 designs circulating.
Meanwhile, the role of nuclear power is shrinking globally and there is no secure capital for such a highrisk industry. So the industry is trying to get government financial and ideological backing. There will always be naive politicians who want to appear forward thinking, and opportunistic academics who will gladly take from the public purse.
These small reactors will be far less cost-effective than larger reactors that have the advantage of economies of scale, but face long licensing periods, have continually overshot construction timelines and had massive cost overruns.
Proponents will cloud these problems by exploiting the climate emergency with more greenwashing. The fatal flaw of nuclear reactors is that they can’t contribute to carbon reduction for decades, and we must reduce emissions before 2030. There are much cheaper and faster ways to produce electricity that can quickly reduce greenhouse gases (GHGS) by replacing coal plants and electrifying transportation. The mainstream International Energy Agency (IEA) recently reported that offshore wind turbines could produce eleven times the electricity that the world presently uses each year.
Wind and solar are both growing. While promoting these “small” reactors, Ontario’s Ford government has scrapped all investments in renewables, while putting billions into refurbishing old reactors. The Sask. Party is deliberately undermining the solar industry. It should be supporting the growing number of small solar businesses, as one way to lower carbon and create green jobs. Instead, it recently undercut the net metering program.
Saskpower should also be creating feed-in tariffs. With advances in battery and other renewable storage, it should be promoting microgrids, which would reduce transmission costs and create a more reliable, resilient, decentralized electrical system.
The Sask Party has a terrible track record on climate. It invested nearly $2 billion in carbon capture and storage (CCS) to try to save coal plants. It never met its targets and the carbon is used to extract more oil, which adds more carbon to the atmosphere. If the government had directly invested this money in renewables it could have shut down a polluting coal plant. Investing in small nuclear reactors would just be another financial boondoggle that postpones serious climate action.
Small reactors are another distraction from Saskatchewan having the highest levels of GHGS on the planet (nearly 70 metric tonnes per capita). While the rest of
Canada has been lowering emissions, they continue to rise here and in Alberta, with its high-carbon oilsands. Saskatchewan and Alberta’s emissions are now almost equal to the rest of Canada’s.
These small reactors can be a back door for bringing nuclear wastes to Saskatchewan. They will not require more uranium mining, which is already in economic trouble here. They would initially use enriched uranium, which presents its own proliferation risks, and could end up using unused uranium in spent fuel and/or reprocessed spent fuel from reactors in Ontario and New Brunswick.
The nuclear industry has a radioactive waste problem which it doesn’t know how to solve; it would love to have the government offer us up as guinea pigs.
This will become a major issue in the 2020 provincial election. Concerned citizens should raise it with their MLAS, with the NDP Opposition and in their networks. We don’t want Saskatchewan to become a sucker province regarding this sham.
Dr. Jim Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies and a founding director of the Qu’appelle Valley Environmental Association (QVEA).