THE NUCLEAR LIABILITY AND COMPENSATION ACT: Is it Appropriate for the 21st Century?
Hearings on a proposed new "Nuke Liability and Compensation Act" begin today in Ottawa. Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Shawn-Patrick Stensil and nuclear expert Dr. Gordon Thompson, who has written a new report for Greenpeace, will both testify.
"By capping the nuclear industry's liability for accident clean up and damage to health at an unrealistic level the Harper government shows it thinks Canadians deserve less industry compensation than nuclear victims in other countries," said Stensil. "Why should nuclear operators get subsidies while victims pay?"
The new Greenpeace report, The Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act: Is it Appropriate for the 21st Century?, warns that the legislation's artificial cap of $650 million on reactor operator liability doesn't meet international standards and would hurt the growth of green power by relieving the nuclear industry of the responsibility of paying sufficient insurance costs.
The report estimates the legislation would effectively subsidize nuclear operators from $4.8 billion to 9.7 billion annually, creating an unfair playing field for green energy and forcing Canadians to pay for the nuclear industry's pollution.
Greenpeace commissioned the report because the Harper government has failed to acknowledge and account for the massive taxpayer liability created by shifting responsibility for nuclear accidents from the nuclear industry to the federal taxpayer. The report recommends the legislation be revised to require the nuclear industry be responsible for paying its own clean up and damage costs and publicly report any taxpayer liabilities.
The nuclear industry needs this special legal protection, the report says, because insurers and even nuclear vendors consider reactor accidents a realistic possibility that would bankrupt them.
Greenpeace says the legislation is more proof the nuclear industry has failed to innovate and build safer and cheaper reactors despite billions in public subsidies. In May, Ontario demanded the Harper government dole out billions in subsidies to build the untested prototype Advanced CANDU from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
"A few years ago the nuclear industry claimed it could build reactors without public subsidy, but today it wants massive public bailouts and protection from nuclear accidents. Harper's accident legislation shows nuclear power is neither cheap nor safe," said Stensil.
Gordon Thompson is a nuclear expert and professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was educated in Australia and the UK, in engineering and science, obtaining his doctorate from Oxford University in 1973.
Read the news release on the report
Download the report
Read the backgrounder