Weighty sense of deja vu
“Our small struggle in Nova Scotia was uncovering a world surprising and somewhat shocking to most of us. Perhaps we had known about this piece or that piece, but now we were forced to see the total picture. It was a ruthless world of power connections that reached into the highest levels of the federal government and spread out tentacles into the farthest corners of the world.”
- Donna Smyth, Subversive Elements
---
Lately, I’ve been feeling a weighty sense of déjà vu. Back in 1981 the names were Millet Creek, Kidd Creek and Aquitaine; now they are Titus, Capella and Tripple. While the names have changed, the intent is the same – uranium mining.
Twenty-five years ago I was a young mother developing anxiety attacks while covering Judge Robert McCleave’s uranium inquiry. I remember three years of division, the activists’ phones that appeared to be tapped, the gloom of those times and the stability that the 1985 moratorium brought. However, things are changing.
The recent rise in the world price of uranium launched it. Capella Resources Ltd. of Vancouver is a publicly traded, junior exploration company with over 25,000 mineral exploration claims covering more than 1.2 million acres in Atlantic Canada. On Capella's website, under the title Exploring for Energy, anyone can read a map of the company's claims.
There is a massive chunk of claims stretching from Windsor nearly to Mahone Bay, with another sizable chunk in the Middleton area, others around Digby and more in the Wentworth area.
The text makes it quite clear that their sole interest here is uranium and that drilling activity in Nova Scotia is underway.
Meanwhile, we know from a story in the Halifax Daily News in mid-December that Rodney MacDonald’s government is willing to look at lifting the moratorium. Environment Minister Mark Parent told the legislature "this government has an open mind" on uranium prospecting and is trying to think in "creative ways" if the province is going to curb its carbon emissions in an effort to fight climate change.
The Premier said, "if we want to be a truly green province and a province that's focused on reducing CO2 emissions, then we have to take a look at new options.
“Potentially, in the future,” he said, a nuclear power plant “could be one of those options."
In a more recent story in the Daily News, reporter Brian Flinn quotes government spokesperson Jennifer Gavin saying that Capella does not have to declare what it’s looking for to obtain exploration permits. If it finds uranium in concentrations greater than 100 parts per million, she said, it must report those results and stop digging.
We already know there is plenty of uranium in Hants County rock and likely it’s amply deposited elsewhere.
Having lived through some of the politics around this controversial ore, I want the MacDonald government to be up front about exploration leniency and what it intends. We deserve that much on the second go-round.
I’ve heard the Council of Canadians is planning a public meeting in Chester Jan. 18 to discuss the possibility for toxic ponds near the headwaters of the Gold and Avon Rivers. "Nova Scotia is too small a place for uranium mining," Rudy Hasse told Flinn. "It's just going to affect too many people."
What I want to know is do we still have a uranium moratorium in Nova Scotia or not? As Smyth wrote in her depiction of the 1980s controversy, “It is not enough for me to cultivate my garden. Whether we like it or not, we are webbed in, connected to each other.”
marke slipp
Comment online since January 9th 2008I am alarmed that the Nova Scotia government is circumventing due process and allowing mining companies to do "general exploration" that includes exploring for uranium, even though I personally think there is perhaps an economic reason to allow this exploration; I do not think there is a need to open up mining for uranium in the province though.
This current government might have "an open mind" on this, according to Environment Minister Mark Parent, but it really needs to consult the people more than it has when dealing with issues that have a clear and specific moratorium in place. This is NOT a partisan issue. This is an issue that requires dialogue amongst the population and can't be fast-tracked like the Fundy Tidal Power development (awarding permission to companies to proceed prior to even receiving any environmental assessment on the development. I know the words "depending on the results of an environmental assessment" are regularly uttered, but it seems to me it is only as lip service).
The fight for a moratorium on uranium exploration and mining that happened 25 years ago happened while I was out in Alberta. Had I been in Nova Scotia I would lined up shoulder-to-shoulder with the advocates for the moratorium. I also would've been advocating for less use of fossil fuel products and more sustainable energy development. There was clear indication back then that the way we as a civilization were preceding was harming the environment we live in, and fossil fuels were a big contributor to the problems.
It is now 2008. Things have changed. Indeed, there is a need for sources of energy that are non-CO2 emitting. Most of the sustainable energy sources are being developed. And they will certainly add to the complete energy makeup that we are going to have to have as a part of an overall energy strategy that includes reduction of use, as well as efficiency of use as large components of it. This will require the participation of everyone – and much more than we have seen so far.
Of course, efficiency and reduction don’t add anything to economic growth, so the development of new sources of energy become a large component of this new way of doing things. And we all are aware that we here in Nova Scotia could use some additional economic boost to keep our families together here – and not have to go out west to make our living. However, it all requires new thinking as well as an open mind.
So, to the subject at hand: there is new nuclear technology available and no one seems to want to get into any dialogue about it. It is called fast neutron reactors instead of old style reactors that only use 0.7% of the energy contained in uranium (after enrichment). The new reactor technology uses 99% of the energy contained in the uranium fuel rods. As well -- and this is the critical point -- the 99% comes from the "previously used fuel", as George Stanford, my nuclear physicist friend and mentor prefers to call it.
Mr. Stanford and a couple of his colleagues, W. H. Hannum and G. E. Marsh, have written a clear and concise Scientific American article, "Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste," available to all at:
One important aspect of this new technology, as stated above, is that it uses the previously used fuel. Mr. Stanford stated to me that there is enough of this fuel to generate power for the next 300 years before having to mine any more uranium. Uranium mining tends to benefit corporations but reusing the fuel does not make the same kind of profit, for them nor their shareholders. It is the same for storing the 'waste' in places like Yucca Mountain. It is expensive to do this and so there is money to be made doing it.
If there are no future solutions to our energy demands, Mr. Stanford said there is enough uranium on the planet to fuel generators "until the end of time." I questioned him on this, as I know there is a finite amount of uranium on the planet. He conceded that it would only last "until the sun goes nova."
I am not a nuclear physicist. I am not a scientist, for that matter. I am trying to learn, however, what is needed to meet our energy requirements through this period of civilization where there are far more people on the planet at one time than ever before. If there weren’t so many people it is unlikely that we would have the current climatic crisis happening. Perhaps we will only need to use nuclear energy for a century before a new and less invasive form of energy is developed.
The Chinese have a symbol for Crisis that is the same one they use for Opportunity. Perhaps this is the hidden gift contained within all this Climate Change/Global Warming that is going on.
I urge you all to read the article at http://tinyurl.com/34uxob