Author: CREDNB

This federal e-petition will be tabled by a liberal member of Parliament when it gets 500 signatures. Click on the petition and please sign if you agree with it.

https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Sign/e-2849

PC leader Blaine Higgs says federal funding to build two new nuclear reactors in New Brunswick is confirmed and will be announced after the election. The province and NB Power have already given $10 million to start the development of the nuclear projects. Liberal leader Kevin Vickers is also supporting the plans to build the new reactors. Yet there is no federal plan or strategy in place for dealing with the new kinds of radioactive wastes that will be produced by these new reactors.

Read the article in the NB Media Co-op by Susan O’Donnell of the RAVEN project and Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

Rick Cheeseman of the VOICES for Sustainable Environments and Communities, and core member of CRED-NB created a visual presentation, SMRs: The Rhetoric and The Reality. It presents the numerous claims made by supporters of SMRs in the context of actual research. Rick’s presentation can be viewed here.

Today CRED-NB wrote to the leaders of all the registered political parties in the province, asking them to publicly declare their support for a public consultation on radioactive waste in New Brunswick.

 

Today Susan O’Donnell, RAVEN project and CRED-NB member published a commentary on the need for a public consultation on radioactive waste in New Brunswick, in the Telegraph Journal. You can read it here. The article was also published in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner and the Moncton Times & Transcript.

Cortney MacDonnell, a UNB student working with CRED-NB member RAVEN, published a story today about the communities affected by coal mining in Columbia. The coal is shipped to Canada, where it is burned in the NB Power Belledune plant in northern New Brunswick. You can read Cortney’s story here.

CRED-NB member Rick Cheeseman published an article today with the NB Media Coop, “Facts vs fictions about the new nuclear reactors promoted by the PCs and Liberals for New Brunswick.” The article links to a visual presentation about the new nukes. You can read his article and access the presentation from this link.  The presentation is also on our Dirty Energy information page.

Our Coalition is supporting calls for a public consultation on radioactive waste in New Brunswick.

Why?

Both PC leader Blaine Higgs and Liberal leader Kevin Vickers are promoting new nuclear reactors for New Brunswick during the election campaign.

The province and NB Power already gave $10 million to two nuclear companies from the US and UK to set up in Saint John. Now the PCs and Liberals are planning to give them more.

Here’s some facts that Blaine Higgs and Kevin Vickers are not sharing:

• The new nuclear projects will create fuel with plutonium that can be used to make nuclear weapons, bringing New Brunswick into a dangerous “plutonium economy“
• The waste from the new reactors will be MORE radioactive per kilo than the existing waste at Lepreau. We will have to store it somewhere in New Brunswick, as no nuclear waste storage place exists in Canada.
• Building the new reactor sites will create hundreds of tons of radioactive concrete, radioactive steel and other radioactive materials that cannot be recycled. NB taxpayers will be responsible for the disposal costs.

Also, both Blaine Higgs and Kevin Vickers are ignoring that:

• Nuclear energy is more expensive than renewable energy.
• Investment in nuclear will delay climate action.
• Nuclear projects create fewer jobs than retrofit and renewable energy jobs.

See more information about nuclear energy development on this website.

We need a public consultation on radioactive waste in New Brunswick that will get all the facts on the table. New Brunswickers need all the information so we can make informed decisions about our future.

Please show your support for our Coalition and be a champion of responsible energy development in New Brunswick. If you sign up you can put your name on our website and receive the Coalition newsletter. Visit our members page for the list of people and groups in our Coalition and sign-up sheet to become a champion.

CRED-NB formed after a visit to New Brunswick and presentations by Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. His March 13 presentation in Fredericton was converted to a webinar when COVID-19 restrictions were announced. A video of Dr. Edwards’ presentation was published by the NB Media Co-op and is available on this website. Today we added a new link to a a transcript of his presentation. You can access the video and transcript from the video tab of this website: scroll down to the first video.

CRED-NB sent a letter today to the federal Minister of Natural Resources, Seamus O’Regan, inviting him to hold public consultations in New Brunswick on his new national radioactive waste policy. You can read the letter here.

The original letter signed by CRED-NB and 100 other groups across Canada about the lack of a national radioactive waste policy is here.