[ RadSafe ] Nuclear revival

[HOWARD.LONG at comcast.net]

Does dismissal of the value of Canada's uranium come partly from CANDU? I understand that
Deuterium is the costly ingredient for Canada's nuclear power (besides over- regulation) and that
Canada (almost alone) can use unenriched uranium in its reactors (relatively non-proliferative of plutonium for bombs). That's why 520 tons of Saddam's yellowcake was shipped to Canada last year. It was the stuff Saddam's  scientists could have turned into bombs by now, hidden from UN inspection, according to his Gen Georges Sada in Saddam's Secrets.

Canada has much to offer the nuclear power industry besides the ubiquitous irrational fearmongers.

If the industry is "unsustanable" after once promising almost free electricity, then Rockwell's chart showing 10x cost with 10x regulation may explain. Let the USN, which does its own recycling safely, take charge without other regs?

Howard Long
-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Roger Helbig" <rhelbig at california.com> 

> http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/letters/story.html?id=5d39b29e-0 
> 014-4f0e-aa4f-2a546be2fb81 
> 
> 
> Technology that's 'old and dangerous' 
> 
> 
> The Leader-Post 
> 
> 
> Published: Thursday, October 02, 2008 
> 
> Duane Bratt's article, "It's time to go nuclear" (Leader-Post, Sept. 15) is 
> cleverly crafted, but fundamentally flawed. His promotion of the nuclear 
> industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan is based on a fallacy: that there is a 
> nuclear revival. 
> 
> In the midst of this supposed revival, the International Atomic Energy 
> Agency (IAEA) projects that by 2030 there will be only 447 to 679 Gigawatts 
> (GW) of nuclear capacity worldwide. This is only 40 to 60 per cent of what 
> was predicted to exist by 1990, the last time there was industry-animated 
> hype about a nuclear boom in the 1980s. 
> 
> The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has 
> projected that by 2030 electricity from renewables will double from 18 to 35 
> per cent of global supply, whereas nuclear will stay flat (16-18 per cent). 
> 
> This projection already needs updating, for just last year China added more 
> wind power than nuclear added worldwide. (The same was true for Spain and 
> for the U.S.) No wonder the U.S.'s Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the same 
> one that pays ex-Greenpeacer Patrick Moore to preach the nuclear revival, 
> has recently lowered its U.S. projections to only between five and eight new 
> nuclear power plants by 2020. 
> 
> Nuclear revivalists like Bratt err in counting only one side of the ledger, 
> forgetting that while they focus on a few proposed nuclear plants, many more 
> are soon facing costly and dangerous decommissioning. According to IAEA 
> information, there are far more plants approaching phase-out than 
> construction, and all that is needed for a full phase-out to gain momentum 
> is the ending of the billions of taxpayer subsidies that keep this 
> unsustainable industry afloat. 
> 
> Bratt's arguing that more subsidies are justified because a shift from coal 
> to nuclear can reduce greenhouse gases continues the legacy of nuclear 
> deception. From both an energy physics and energy economics vantage, 
> efficiency, cogeneration and renewables are proving to reduce carbon much 
> more effectively, and without creating a long-lived toxic waste stream. 
> 
> Bratt seems to be from another planet when he argues that the Prairies 
> should be able to get proliferation-prone enrichment technology because 
> Canada has been a "responsible nuclear country." We've been in the nuclear 
> weapons game from the start: with Chalk River the original supply station 
> for US weapons plutonium, Port Hope's plant refining the uranium used in the 
> bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and depleted uranium (DU) left from enriching 
> uranium exported to the U.S. still available to the Pentagon. 
> 
> His appeal for a nuclear centre of excellence and nuclear industry education 
> as a means for the region to prosper builds more myth upon his erroneous 
> analysis. Rather than us facing the prospects of being left behind if we 
> don't jump on a (nonexistent) nuclear bandwagon, we face being conned into 
> continuing to pay dearly for an old and dangerous technology, while the 
> world moves on to sustainable energy. 
> 
> Jim Harding 
> 
> Harding is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies and 
> author of Canada's Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global 
> Nuclear System. 
> 
> Fort Qu'Appelle 
> 
> 
> 
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