Nuclear Power and Uranium Mining - Dispelling the Myths

Because of the climate crisis, the push to more environmentally friendly sources of energy is coming on strong. However, our government and the power industry seem to have there heads up there asses. Over the past few years we've seen commercials from the Government of Canada pushing the idea that Nuclear power and bio-energy will be the saviors of the planet. This couldn't be further from the truth. For this article I will stick to nuclear power.

The Nuclear power industry is pushing there product on four ideas which if inspected are complete myths and outright lies. Unfortunately our government is complicit in these lies. The four points they are using to sell nuclear power are that:

1. It is safe
2. It is greenhouse gas emissions free
3. It is cheap
4. It is peaceful

Before I talk about these points lets get some facts out of the way. It has long been known that the safest place for Uranium is in the ground, undisturbed. Once it is removed from the ground and exposed to air and water it begins to leach its radioactive particles. Uranium takes over 200 000 years to decay, and releases these deadly particles for that entire length of time, poisoning everything in the area. Radioactive particles from this material can also be transported by moving water and the wind, expanding the area of devastation. These particles are invisible, so you won't know if your being effected until you are already sick and it is too late. They seep into the water table, into plants and animals you eat and into the air you breath.

In Canada, uranium is mined with open pit methods, and of the extracted material, only 15 percent can be used to create nuclear power and of the radiation, only 40% of the potential power can be harvested and used as power. So only 6% of the extracted radioactive potential is used as power. The rest of the material must be disposed of. However, there are no known methods of containing or disposing of this material. Attempts to encase it in concrete were a complete failure and after 30-50 years they leak. Holding ponds are notorious for leaks and over flows, in fact there are no lagoons that have not leaked in one way or another. No technology exists that can contain uranium waste for 200 000 years, it just isn't possible. So what we are doing, as with every other industry we operate, we are giving up the health and lives of our grand children for our gains, all the while killing ourselves in the process.

Since 2004, the global climate crisis hit the mainstream, and the interesting in nuclear power has been renewed. This has caused the price of uranium to grow exponentially, increasing pressure on government to open up markets to exploration. In the last Federal budget of 2008, the Government of Canada announced a subsidy of $300 million to the nuclear industry and $0 to fight climate change, and only a tiny amount to actual renewable and clean energy technologies. All this even though the citizens of Ottawa, the nations capital, are in the midst of fighting the nuclear/uranium industry, who are trying to open a mine in the surrounding area. If its not good for the families of the politicians why is it safe for the rest of us?

Now lets tackle the current myths being pushed by the industry one at a time.

1. Is it safe?

No, nuclear power is one of the most unsafe forms of power production known to man. If we start back in the beginning and follow the history of the radium and uranium industry in Canada, we find a long trail of lies followed by death and destruction of the environment, as well as human and animal life.

The first Canadian mines were opened in Uranium City, Saskatchewan (Sask. is still the Uranium capital of Canada), which today is a barren land with toxic radioactive winds blowing from its mines. However, the first major disaster that can be attributed to this deadly radioactive metal is sourced from Northern Canada in the North West Territories. Uranium extracted from the early mines in the NWT was the source material used in the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Beyond that massive death toll is the fact that the tilings were dumped into the waters, which poisoned the native people, there food and water. Most of the people that mined in those days had extremely short lives due to exposure. The dumping of tilings is a common thread in the history of uranium mining and nuclear power as we saw above, because there is no way to safely dispose of it.

Uranium has poisoned the water and food of every community that has ever allowed the extraction of this deadly substance from there soils. This has been followed by epidemics of cancer and birth defects, which persist for generations after the first exposed people. I again refer you to the length of time it takes uranium to decay, that being over 200 000 years, which translates into thousands of generations of people.

2. It is GHG emissions free? Will it help prevent the global climate crisis?

No, people who tout nuclear power as GHG emissions free are considering only the nuclear plant itself and not the processes that are required to build the plant, extract the material (mining), transport the material and dispose of the material. When all of these are considered the impacts on the global climate are certainly not emissions free, safe or clean. Another point worth considering is that these nuclear plants use huge amounts of water in the cooling process, which is ejected back into the river systems, lakes and oceans. This heating of the worlds oceans will also effect global climate change, aquatic environments and put more strain on the coming water crisis, which has come to light over the past decade. There is also the fact that they are cutting down trees and forests to get at this rock which reduces the ability of the land to be a carbon sink an pull GHG's from the air back to the land to be stored in plant life.

3. Is it cheap?

Certainly not. As I stated above the nuclear industry in Canada and the world is highly subsidized. This money comes straight from the tax base, so even if the cost that show up on your bill from the electric company are low, you've already paid the other costs through the subsidies the government gives away to these companies. And above that your paying for there huge profit margins, and after all they wouldn't be in the business if there weren't huge profits.

Beyond visible initial costs, what is being ignored are the social and environmental costs, and the money needed to clean up after the nuclear industry abandons mines, power plants and processing facilities. The companies, like in every other industry, do not clean up there mess, they leave the land exactly how it is and move on to other more profitable ventures, leaving your government to pay the clean up bills, if clean up is even possible. Also, since like oil, uranium is a finite resource (and expected to run out around the same time), it will eventually run out, and the one industry towns with will pop up around mines (think of Fort McMurry) will be left with no jobs to support there people in the coming years. Again, government will be left to fill the gap and provide for these people until they can be retrained. Unfortunately most of them will be unfit for other jobs due to illness and serious disease. There children will require medical treatment for there entire lives, putting unneeded strains on the already suffering health system.

4. Is it peaceful?

There are no guarantees that uranium mined and processed in Canada will not be obtained and used by terrorist or rogue nation in nuclear weapons. No systems is in place by government or industry that can guaranteed this. And if you think the effects felt from radioation due to mining and processing are any better then a bomb, you've got another thing coming, and its called cancer.

Plus, in todays world, where people use planes as missiles to destroy buildings, who is going to defend these nuclear reactors against terrorist attacks? It only takes one crazy to fly a plane into a plant to cause a melt down. Is that a chance your willing to take? These things are sitting ducks, targets that would cause the most possible damage to human life. Causing massive amounts of suffering for generations to come. We can see the devastation of this possibility in the aftermath of the Chernobyl incident, which was cause by human error.

Depleted uranium is the left overs from the 15% of usable extracted materials. This depleted uranium still contains 60% of the radioactive energy of the original extracted material. In recent years this material (metal) has found a use in the weapons manufacturing industry. Being a product that is impossible to dispose of safely, companies will practically give it away just to whip there hands clean of it. This makes it one of, if not the cheapest metal on the market today. Its low cost has drawn a lot of attention from the weapons manufacturing industry to try to bring down the cost of making weapons and increasing profits.

Depleted uranium from every uranium mining and nuclear power consuming country in the world is being made into the casings for missiles, bombs and bullets and had been dropped in the middle east for the past decade. The effects of which will have disastrous impacts on the people of that region for centuries to come as well as the soldiers who have been stationed there. In the coming decades I believe we will see a scandal erupt similar to the one surrounding agent orange and agent purple in Vietnam and Cambodia, which was also sourced from Canadian resources.

Conclusion:

Nuclear power and the uranium mining that is inevitably attached to it, are not safe, not clean, not cheap and not peaceful, in fact they are the complete opposite. The Government of Canada and the Nuclear Industry have amassed a huge disinformation campaign to fool the Canadian people into believing nuclear power is part of what will save the world. When, if all the facts are looked at together, it is worse then every other known source of power in the world today. Not only that but it poses the most dangerous threat to the safety and continuation of the human race.

Currently our federal government has allowed exploration in almost every province in the country. Newfoundland is very near to mining. British Columbia has lifted its moratorium on uranium exploration and is actively pushing the mining of uranium. New Brunswick, which already has nuclear plants has taken proposals for mining operations in Moncton and a few other areas (luckily the residents are standing there ground, opposing the operation). Saskatchewan has never stopped mining uranium. Ontario has approved exploration.

Nova Scotia is the only province in the country that maintains a moratorium on uranium mining. Unfortunately it is a de-facto moratorium which can be repealed at anytime without consulting the citizenry. At the moment a company called Triple Uranium who is a publicly traded US company that deals only in uranium has been grated rights to explore areas of known uranium deposits for 'other base metals'. In my opinion, the MacDonald Conservative government has already made up its mind, and is planing to repeal the moratorium as soon as this company has a buyer for the land it is actively buying up. This is an attempt to reduce the ability of the citizens and there advocacy groups to oppose this activity by having everything already set up.

I call on all Canadians to oppose uranium mining in Canada, your province, home towns and communities. You are fighting for not only your lives but the lives of thousands of generations of Canadians that will not be given the choice to live without this poison. It will be forced upon them from birth to death by the decisions we make.

Please defend Canada.