Speaking of wildly inflated figures, in last Friday's local (Montreal) French-language newspaper Le Devoir, Greenpeace activist Steven Guilbeault said that 10 000 to 30 000 died at Chernobyl ( "Pensons ŕ la catastrophe de Tchernobyl: de 10 000 ŕ 30 000 morts," ).
Evidently he hasn't read UNSCEAR's Annex J either.....
http://www.unscear.org/pdffiles/annexj.pdf
Guilbeault also said that no new nuclear reactor had been built in North America since 1978 -- which is of course also wrong (unless he figures Canada is not part of North America ?) :
1979 May 1 Bruce-7 construction started
1979 August 1 Bruce-8 construction started.
1982 April 1 Darlington-1 construction started.
1981 September 1 Darlington-2 construction started.
1984 September 1 Darlington-3 construction started.
1985 July 1 Darlington-4 construction started.
His main arguments though are that nuclear power doesn't help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that it causes nuclear weapons proliferation.
As for the first, the amount of air pollution and greenhouse gases avoided in Canada by nuclear power in March 2003 alone was 5,450,000 tonnes.
For the year 2002, the amount of Carbon dioxide (CO2) avoided was 65,000,000 tonnes, the amount of nitrogen oxides (NOx) avoided was 250,000 tonnes, the amount of sulpher dioxide (SO2) avoided was 290,000 tonnes, and the amount of particulate emissions avoided was 91,000 tonnes
(data from the Canadian Nuclear FAQ, http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/nuke-gen-monthly-2002.htm )
As for NW proliferation, we have once again, with North Korea, another example illustrating the fact that a nation need not have nuclear power plants in order to develop nuclear weapons.
Comments may be sent to redaction@ledevoir.com
Jaro