No Debate on Nuclear Power for Me

 

My Story:

I was introduced to nuclear physics through my grade two teacher. Not that she taught any physics but she had a huge atomic table that she pulled down like a window blind over written exam questions on the blackboard.

 

I was fascinated with by the entire concept of elements – that these were the tiny bits that made up the entire world. That all the objects I knew including things that I drank, could be literally boiled down to these 90 + elements. Later in grade 7 or 8, the numbers on the squares acquired meaning and I was further enthralled by atoms and the adding or subtracting protons and neutrons to an atoms. 

 

In high school I was a “brain”, by today’s terms, a geek or nerd. All it seemed to do is scare people off. To add to the social unacceptability, I read Azimov and Heinlein science fiction long before it was popular.

 

In an honours physics course in university, I found my place amongst other students who dreamt of interstellar travel and atomic power. One time when we were talking about nuclear power, our physics professor brought up the issue of nuclear waste. In 1962, we students (it was a small honours class) all thought he was a bit of a fuddy duddy. Clearly the smart people working on nuclear power waste would get waste figured out before it was too big of a problem. 

 

Besides raising the problem of nuclear waste, Dr. Kendal maintained that the building of nuclear power plants was largely for the production of nuclear bombs. As he and I realized that my career was not going to be in physics, I spent more time with him simply in order to understand enough to pass. I thought that he seemed overly cynical but agreed with his position about the use of nuclear bombs. At the end of the school year, he gave me a black and silver lapel pin with the CND symbol which later became the “peace symbol”.

 

I fell for the “electricity too cheap to monitor” and “taming of the atom” literature. I supported the idea of “reprocessing” and “recycling” that swept the 1960’s and early 1970’s. When I found out that both of these processes exacerbate the problem of nuclear waste, I felt betrayed, upset that the ideas and the industry that I supported could be so fraudulent. It was 1976 when I revised my support saying “if they find an answer to the waste, I might change my mind”. The more I read of the history and science of nuclear power, the more appalled I become that our generation has allowed the world to become so polluted. 

 

As I write this, I think of my brand new grandchild – and all the other brand new babies that I’ve been meeting. And I couldn’t help feeling angry – angry that this still needs to be said, that the nefarious nuclear industry has politicians in its thrall. For decades our governments have sunk billions of dollars into research, construction, and followed up with public commissions to decide what to do about nuclear power or its waste.

 

What it doesn’t have in its thrall are investors and the financial markets. In fact, they have not invested private money in any substantial amounts since 1973. Wall street will not back the building of new nuclear power plants, no matter what size they are, so the industry is approaching governments where MPs can spend taxpayer money and try to look like they are doing “something for the environment”.

 

I’ve debated, taught or spoken about parts of this topic over the years since becoming interested. While working as the Executive Director of Physicians for Global Survival (Canadian affiliate of International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War) what started as a series of information pamphlets became a book, From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You. 

 

There is a risk to swimming against the nuclear tide. The nuclear industry has such political power to withstand criticism that a new generation of politicians have been snowballed into supporting it. The nuclear business includes nuclear media control. 

 

John Gofman, born in 1918, became both a physician and a physicist. He was recruited to the Manhattan project and, working under Oppenheimer, he was the first person to separate plutonium. He went on to discover uranium-232, uranium-233 and protactinium-232 & -233.  When the Manhattan project closed and scientists moved elsewhere, Dr. Gofman returned to a faculty position at Berkeley, California. In 1963, he became head of the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory. In that position he was constantly directed to find no fault with nuclear power. In 1969, after he discovered a connection between radiation, chromosomal abnormalities and cancer, he co-published a paper asserting that “even low dose radiation harmed humans”. 

 

He said, “I realized that the entire nuclear program was based on a fraud – namely that there is a ‘safe’ amount of radiation, a permissible dose that wouldn’t hurt anyone.” After his research funding dried up, John went on to discover the lipids HDL & LDL, and demonstrated their role in heart disease. For this feat, he was honoured in 2007 as the “Father of Clinical Lipidology”. 

 

When this incredible man died, discoverer of four elements and two biological molecules, the New York Times obituary called him a “nuclear gadfly”. 

 

I’m a rural family physician. I am a jack or jill of all trades and a master or mistress of many. I know what the nuclear industry thinks of me because I see it on social media. Some of the names are unprintable.

 

Is nuclear power “green”?

 

The nuclear power reactor itself emits no greenhouse gases when it is operating. To be “green” however would mean that it should have “little or no environmental impact”. There is more to nuclear power than the power plant. Nuclear power includes mining, refining, enrichment, transportation from mine to refinery, transportation from refinery to manufacturing site, from manufacturing to nuclear power reactor. The energy required for enrichment itself would power a small city and must be continual. The amount of CO2 produced during the pouring of concrete, the smelting of the steel and the transportation of all these products has been estimated to require twenty years of clean operating to payback. 

 

Although the definition of “green” doesn’t mention waste, I would contend that any source of energy which produces waste for which there is no storage, no recycling, and which exists for hundreds of thousands of years cannot be classified as “green”? Since it produces more waste than it produces energy, can it be called green? Advertising itself as green is fraudulent.

 

Can nuclear power address climate change? There are currently 440 nuclear power plants in operation in the world. At full capacity[1], they would supply about 4% of the world’s energy. 

 

 

 

But nuclear, like hydro, produces only electrical energy.

 

Nuclear proponents often compare the CO2 footprint, health impacts and waste with coal. So let’s try to replace the electricity gained from coal with that from nuclear power. How many nuclear power plants do we need? To increase the 10% number to even 50% of electrical power, we need about 2200! If we can produce 50% of the world's electrical power with nuclear, we would still be less than 10% of the total energy used!

 

According to the World Nuclear Association, there are a total of 55 nuclear power plants under construction today. Since it takes an average of ten years to build a single NPP, we would be needing to be building these 2000 NPP now. Aside from the question of whether we have enough technicians, physicists, and atomic workers to do the job, do we have enough places in the world to build them? Regular nuclear power plants need a lot of space, must be situated beside bodies of water for coolants, and have a secure electrical source of their own. 

 

Of these 55, several should be given special attention: 

1.    The Shidaowan Chinese reactor is the first fourth generation gas-cooled reactor in the world – it is expected to go on-line as a demonstration, so it planned to have a low output of electricity. No one knows if it will really work. Canada put millions of dollars into two Maple reactors which cannot be operated. 

2.    One of the major expenses in building a reactor is the length of time required so the Finnish Olkiluoto 3, a third generation reactor, was sold to the government as a “fast build” to decrease the costs. It was originally expected to go on-line in 2008, four years after the soil was turned. It will not be ready for loading with fuel until 2022. 

3.    Barakah1 is being built in the UAE. One of the problems with nuclear power is proliferation of nuclear weapons. With its sun, wind and petroleum, I suspect that the only reason for the UAE to get a nuclear reactor is to produce nuclear weapons for the Arab world. 

4.    The Vogtle 3 is one of the only two US NPP in construction – it has been in construction for over ten years, was the cause of a Westinghouse bankruptcy, and still there are questions about its opening date. A news release from May 2020 stated that “it will be extremely challenging for the two Toshiba-Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors to be completed by November 2021 (for Unit 3) and November 2022 (for Unit 4)”.

 

Besides the length of time required, nuclear power plants average in the billions of dollars each. Neither the waste nor the metal used in the construction of the power plant can be recycled; there is no way to neutralize or turn off the process of waste creation once the power has been turned on. The waste will continue for thousands of years after it leaves the nuclear power plant.

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I have said that I would not debate nuclear power and this is why. It is not green and it simply cannot come on-line fast enough with enough power to make even a dent in CO2 emissions. Had we all the will in the world to support nuclear power, technology could not rise to the occasion and given the on-going waste problem, it shouldn’t even try.

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[1] They are rarely working at full capacity and some, more than others, are shut down for repairs, refurbishing or recharging.

Think Before You Leap

Everyone has had this sort of experience. Leaning over the edge or a cliff, standing on the side of a bridge or on a deck with spaces between the boards, something slips out of a pocket or a hand. In the moments of the fall, you run through your alternatives, 

-       Ignore the loss – sorry you messed up the environment by dropping a tissue or tube of lip gloss.

-       reach way way over risking your own fall? Jump after it if you’re over water? If you are a swimmer?

-       the value of the item – should you watch carefully for its landing and then launch your search party? Or sadly say good bye?

-       how long should you mourn? Days, hours, years or mere minutes?

In the spring of 1965, three guys signed me on to be their cook on a sailing from Trinidad & Tobago to Bermuda. It was a chance to sail for me. I was surprised that they hadn’t had any of my cooking before we launched because I would not have put "cook" into my curriculum vitae. However, I managed to fry eggs and sausages, open cans of spaghetti and satisfy their needs.

On the leg between Grenada and St. Vincent, I was lounging on the deck of the 45 ft sailboat when the silk scarf around my head fluttered off to the sea. It was my favourite scarf. Without engaging thought, I dived overboard. As my feet left the deck, I heard someone shout, “man overboard”.

As I arched over the water, it occurred to me that I had done a supremely stupid thing. I had overlooked the speed of the craft. There was nothing that I could do but follow through on the objective. Upon striking the water, I secured the scarf. 

The sailboat had been having a lovely run in front of the wind. “Coming too” and zigzagging into the wind was not on the skipper's itinerary. Especially when the rolling sea obscured his sight of me, his target. 

I hung there in 200 ft of water; it was salt water, ocean water, so I was very buoyant. With a minimum of effort, I could stay afloat. The sailboat was visible whenever I whip-kicked some elevation. My biggest fears were sharks and other unknown but surely deadly threats in the depths beneath me. I was sure that my skinny legs would look like food to a hungry denizen of the deep.

As the sailboat finally – the guys said that it was over an hour – reached me, I could see by the look on the skipper’s face that imaginary things in the water were not the only threat to my well-being.

Rob, the skipper, said nothing to me although the crew impressed upon me that my actions had resulted in a never-ending string of invectives. I apologized profusely. 

We sailed through the leeward islands, stopping for refuelling and restocking. Guadeloupe was a specially beautiful port.  

Rob never spoke directly to me again. His steely silence was broken when we arrived in Bermuda and he said good bye. I never saw any of them again. Sadly, I don’t even remember their names.

A sad tale about jumping even if we can. Some things are not worth the price we pay.

Who am I and why would I want to run in an election?

How to describe myself when sometimes I feel that I am an entirely different person every day? Sometimes two or three different people in one day - a concerned citizen, a caring mom, an angry driver. 

I'm a relatively healthy woman in my 70's. I am a widow; my marriage of 47 years ended abruptly and unexpectedly four years ago. I still practice medicine as a doctor - mostly as a locum in Nunavut serving Inuit communities. I have three grown daughters who live in Winnipeg and Calgary and while I'm glad they are on the prairies, it would be nice to have them closer. Fortunately there are younger friends in my life as well.

I am blessed to live in the Touchwood Hills, probably the only hills and woodlands between Regina and Prince Albert. My passive solar house (built in the mid-1980's) uses a small wood heater for back-up warmth. I live on a property managed by the New Roots Community Land Trust whose goals include pesticide and herbicide-free gardening and farming.

My federal riding is Regina-Qu'Appelle; the incumbent is Andrew Scheer, leader of the Conservative party. His platform is the antithesis of a progressive environmentally responsive and collaborative government. His past behaviour and pronouncements suggest repressive responses to crime, health care, Indigenous peoples and immigrants. I could not watch him win without putting up a fight.

The rising climate crisis is less apparent on the prairies than it is on any of Canada's three coasts - the rising warming seas and resultant extreme weather patterns affect us less, protected as we are by the land mass around us. We have noticed the increasing risks of fires - and increasing numbers of tornadoes (the only tornado I had ever heard of as a child was the one in Kansas that propelled Dorothy into the Wizard of Oz). Our weather is less predictable - but any individual can remember unpredictable events in the past.

But environment is not the only attraction that the Green Party has to offer. The Green Party has two documents, Vision Green https://www.greenparty.ca/en/vision-green and Mission: Possible https://www.greenparty.ca/en/mission-possible that tackle employment including green jobs, transportation, healthcare, education, and economic transformation. The Green Party is neither right nor left - it's justice, Indigenous Rights, good government, and inclusive government.

My own interests include but are not limited to:

1. Environmental reparations for extractive industries - and developing protocols into the future that no longer ignores what happens when the industry folds; 
2. A national fresh water audit and plans for protections - includes placing a value on wetlands so that the burden of maintenance doesn't rest with reserves, farmers or landowners;
3. A guaranteed liveable income for poverty reduction and possible elimination;
4. An improved health care system with more depth to respond to mental illness with sufficient support systems;
5. Fulfillment of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (which are not unlike those of the Royal Commission of 1996);
6. A social and educational system that places the rights of children first;
7. A justice system with increased interest in remediation and restorative justice for both victim and offender;
8. Since farmers are mentioned as some of the biggest offenders in carbon production by the UNIPCC, I would like to work with farmers and farming communities on approaches to climate crisis while still retaining production. What would it look like?

I am tired of seeing governments act as though they understand the wealth of scientific research on social, spiritual and environmental issues instead of acting as though they were run by polling agencies, based on popularity contests. It is reprehensible that our government can be made up of elected individuals with blinders to all but their pocketbooks and those of the company they keep.

We know what needs to be done - I believe in the potential of human beings to work together. Let's start doing it!

Water. Keep it. Conserve it. Protect it.

Green Vision 3.2  Water protection and conservation

I grew up beside a stream - we referred to it as a “creek”; it ran continuously through the summer but was not large enough to rank as even a small “river”. It was shallow enough that our parents let us - indeed encouraged us - play in it all summer. We caught minnows with baited hooks on strings. We had mud slides and raced sticks through the current. 

Such idyllic summers occur for fewer and fewer children. Children downstream from the tar sands are told to stay out of the water. There are lakes that are too contaminated with fertilizer run-off and turn green in early July, some that are contaminated with pesticides; Premier Moe gave a mining company permission to pollute a lake with radioactive mining tailings.

The Green Party principle 3.2 recognizes the threat to water and rolls out three principles: Keep it. Conserve it. Protect it. 

Keep it. Canada has within its boundaries the world’s largest supply of fresh water. Multinationals see the potential to rake in trillions of dollars when Canada’s trade agreements make it possible to trade bulk water. Without a national water policy, the very aquifers beneath the Western provinces could be siphoned South. As a Green, I would press for a national audit of Canada’s water resources, surface and subsurface, and an audit of instream and downstream needs and potential demands.  

Conserve it. We are the second most wasteful people in the world after the United States. The Canadian government must strive to provide safe drinking water to all Canadians including First Nations communities. Greens believe that combinations of research, regulations and appropriate infrastructure should ensure safe water for future generations.

Protect it. Not only should the federal government use its powers via the Fisheries Act and its role in interjurisdictional sharing to protect water supplies in the present but anticipate changes (such as decreasing glacial run-off)  to ensure that a safe water supply reaches people before industry, small scale market gardening, mining and fishing operations. 

Based upon these principles, the Green Party promises to increase research into less water-intensive agriculture, shift research from dams and diversions to source water protection, watershed restorations and towards locally-based water conservation and efficiency planning and programs.

The Regina-Qu’Appelle riding has conflicting interests within its relatively small piece of Canada. Water is a complicated issue.

May Day - m'aidez

M'Aidez

"Help Me" was translated as a universal call to help

but written in English as "May Day"

Does labour need help? Too many jobs are being turned into part time without enough hours for benefits - two part time jobs may provide a full time income but they won't provide benefits including a retirement plan. Meanwhile the foreign worker program recruits workers from elsewhere where, in many cases, they work under abusive conditions and everywhere skew the labour market. 

The Green Party's Principle 1.8, which I read before taking part in the Regina May Day parade with several other Greens, has an extensive preamble of which several points stand out:

·      The National Work-Life Conflict Study (quoted in the Green Vision) was done in 2001 and showed that all working Canadians were spending longer hours at work, doing more overtime and experiencing more stress in their lives. Work-life stress adds an estimated $5 billion to Canada's health care costs[i]. I don’t think that the environment has changed much since it was published.

·      The Harper administration removed the office of the Status of Women Canada AND a stipulation for pay equity within the federal civil service.

·      By following the USA to the bottom, Canada falls behind progressive labour standards in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Finland where higher average pay and longer holidays produce lower rates of unemployment and less petty crime.

·      While acknowledging that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) might fill the need for some replacement workers especially in professional and highly skilled areas, the Green Party believes that it is essentially flawed and open to much abuse. 

Growing up as a farmer’s daughter and becoming a professional, I spent little time personally as a labourer – I don’t think a stint as a cocktail waitress qualifies. But as a doctor, I’ve cared for many. When I first went to work in Wynyard, I was stunned to discover that people working long hours at hard work in the chicken plant had only one week of holidays plus their birthday for the first year, two weeks of holidays thereafter.

What does the Green Party support? 

Raising the minimum wage to $15 and ending the current Temporary Foreign Worker Program both make sense. The TFWP funding would be converted into a domestic recruitment program – where, since the minimum wage would now be a liveable wage, youth and other willing Canadians would more likely be enticed to the market.

Since research shows that people are healthier and more productive with four weeks of holiday per year, the Green Party wimped out stating that it supports three weeks. I don’t think that we should stop at three when we know that four is needed!

No doubt that we should establish in law the rights to equal pay for work of equal value. To the point about offering tax incentives for companies providing on-site daycare, healthy food and bike or public transport commutes, I would add having on-site health advisors.

Workers should know their rights. To that end, all places of employment are supposed to display a flyer outlining workers’ rights. Unfortunately, we need a law that imposes the same for federally-regulated work sites.

In the Green Party’s list of principles are many that require new regulations or new regulatory bodies. Both industry and labour already feel “regulated to death”. As we move into a future with more sustainable and conversion-to-green employment, we need to look at ways in which workers can be more involved in setting the safety standards – health, equity, hours, etc - of their work places.

One sign in the May Day march said, “The world is run by workers; workers should run the world.” As the Occupy Wall Street movement showed, uniting intellectuals, professionals, workers and farmers would not be easy but it would be necessary to shift the "running of the world" away from Wall Street and billionaires. 

It is my belief that we can unite around a greater threat - climate chaos.

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[i][i]A long but enlightening read found at http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/H72-21-186-2001-1E.pdf

Intertemporal Choice - Eliminating Poverty

 Intertemporal Choice

The act of choosing to accept $20 dollars today

instead of $100 dollars a week from now.

Difficult to do, isn't it? Depends a lot upon who is offering the deal, how much trust is involved and where you think that you will be in one week. Even then studies have shown that an overwhelming number of us would still choose $20, accepting the old truism that "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush". This thinking with respect to the world we live in is what got us to an economic system of short-term gains and unfettered resource extraction. 

Whether or not you agree with the connection, it was my thought when I examined Vision Green Principle 4.12. "Eliminating Poverty". (No particular reason that I chose that as the first one into which to delve - just where the book opened.)

Ever since Bill brought a booklet into our home about a guaranteed minimum wage, I believed in it. I was hooked on the "child allowance" cheques of the 1950's when they meant something; mom gave "my" allowance to me as my "clothing allowance". I was delighted to have the independence to manage my own purchases. (Outerwear and underwear were exempt - Mom looked after the costs there.) A guaranteed minimum wage just seemed to be an extension of the child allowance.            

Many leaders talk about reducing or eliminating poverty; several "experiments" have been held in various countries and various parts of Canada with guaranteed minimum wages - and the findings have been positive. When guaranteed a minimum liveable income, people recycle the money in the community, local businesses benefit, petty crime goes down, domestic violence goes down, child hunger goes down and people become healthier. 

We know what to do, someone has to have the guts to do it.

How would it work?

Everyone would all get the bi-monthly or monthly cheque. Many of us will be fortunate enough to never need it. Accessing the program would require only citizenship. A large part of the "poverty-industry" especially government programs would disappear - various programs of welfare, disability pensions, seniors benefits, and unemployment insurance would no longer be needed. Social workers, doctors, and health care workers would be freed of the endless paperwork to provide the care that is needed for mental health, addictions and healthy family relations.

There would be built-in incentives to be gainfully employed as well - when there are jobs to be had. Of course, there would be a few who would figure out how to abuse it somehow - but there are those that do so with every existing program!

The National Council of Welfare has estimated that 15% of Canadians live in poverty and we know many who manage to escape poverty by two or even three jobs.  From where I live, many escape hunger by subsistence farming and gardening. From my experience as a doctor in rural, remote or inner city, I believe that a Guaranteed Liveable Income would enormously change health care needs - anxiety and mental health issues that underlie so much of the demand upon our time.

The actual steps listed by the Green Party to eventually eliminate poverty stop short of research leading to implementation of a Guaranteed Liveable Income. Certainly it will be my duty to press for bolder steps.

I consider the program another way of "paying forward" for a brighter future for many.