Cost threat:
The McGuinty government has estimated the costs of its nuclear
plans at $26 billion. This estimate is highly suspect.
Investment analysts say the cost of building nuclear reactors
has more than doubled in the last three years.
A truer estimate of the McGuinty nuclear plan is up to $50
billion.
Ontarians are still paying off Ontario Hydro's $31 billion in
debt, largely created by building the first generation of
reactors.
Every dollar spent on nuclear or on nuclear debt is a dollar not
spent on renewable energy.
Accident threat
Canadian-designed reactors have the same design flaw that
contributed to the Chernobyl explosion and to the world's first
nuclear accident in 1952 at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's Chalk
River laboratories. This design flaw does not meet modern safety
standards.
The emergency shut-down systems of Canadian-designed reactors
are untested and unproven. Confidence in the ability of these
systems to operate in accident situations is low.
A terrorist attack at the Pickering nuclear station would put
2.5 million people in a 30km danger zone at risk. The consequences
would dwarf those of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. About 350,000
people were evacuated from a 30 km zone around Chernobyl.
Only in Ontario do millions of people live in the danger zone
around an aging nuclear plant. No other government allows that. The
McGuinty government shouldn't allow it.
Radioactive waste threat:
Canada's nuclear reactors have produced over 40,000 tonnes of
highly radioactive fuel waste.
The Pickering reactor site stores 20,000 tonnes of unprotected
high-level radioactive waste.
Dismantling a reactor creates tonnes of a radioactive trash that
must be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of
years.
Mining and processing uranium for reactor fuel produces waste
known as tailings. There are currently over 200 million tonnes of
uranium tailings in Ontario and Saskatchewan. This waste remains a
hazard for thousands of years and contains carcinogens, such as
radium, radon gas, and thorium among others.
Canadian reactors are permitted to release levels of radioactive
tritium at levels that are considered hazardous by US and European
radiation protection standards.
Terrorism threats:
Canadian reactors were not designed to withstand a terrorist
attack and would not meet post-9/11 safety standards, according to
a report by a leading nuclear risk expert, commissioned by
Greenpeace.
Radioactive fuel waste-toxic for up to a million years-is stored
at the Pickering site and other reactors sites and is vulnerable to
terrorist attack
Canadian reactors use natural uranium and online fueling. That
makes them attractive to countries hoping to acquire the capacity
to divert plutonium from used fuel to build atomic weapons. India
used a Canadian reactor to build an atomic bomb.
The McGuinty nuclear plan:
Despite the serious concerns, Premier McGuinty is committed to
maintaining nuclear electricity at 50 per cent of the Ontario
system, at a cost of billions for new or rebuilt nuclear
reactors.
The Premier's billions for nuclear power robs renewable energy
of the funding, space and support it needs to grow, preventing the
growth of a green energy system for the 21st Century.
Green electricity path:
Premier McGuinty claims he wants to expand green energy. Yet, he
blocks real growth in renewable energy.
Canada's largest environmental organizations, including
Greenpeace, have shown that renewable is doable. They issued a
report that says the only way to expand green energy is to replace
ageing reactors, starting with Pickering.
The McGuinty government should shut down Pickering and replace
the reactors with green energy. It can be done!
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For more information, please
contact:
Brian Blomme, Communications Coordinator, (416) 930-9055
Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Energy Campaigner, (416) 884-7053