Premier Higgs was in Ottawa on Oct. 17 looking for federal funding for New Brunswick’s plans to green the electricity grid and make the province “net-zero” by 2050. He confirmed that developing new reactor designs is a provincial priority, along with converting the NB Power coal-fired plant at Belledune to burning biomass. In response, the federal government announced $7M for the ARC-100 project and $2M for a feasibility study for Belledune. This is in contrast to the Nova Scotia plan that focuses on offshore wind generation. CRED-NB core member Susan O’Donnell wrote a short article about it for the NB Media Co-op, HERE.
Category: Coalition news
CRED-NB brief to federal committee on natural resources
On October 3, CRED submitted a brief to the House of Commons standing committee on Natural Resources. The committee is studying Canada’s clean energy plans in the context of the North American energy transition. Our brief consisted of a document, Eleven reasons nuclear energy should not be part of Canada’s plans for a clean electricity grid in future. Read the document:
In English HERE
In French HERE
New Brunswick Indigenous communities and all New Brunswickers need facts, not sales hype, about SMNRs
Governments and other nuclear proponents are failing both Indigenous and settler communities by promoting sales and publicity material about small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs) instead of sharing facts by independent researchers not tied to the industry. A commentary by Peskotomuhkati Chief Hugh Akagi and CRED-NB core member Susan O’Donnell was published by The Hill Times, the Telegraph Journal and the NB Media Co-op. Read it HERE.
Share your comments about the ARC-100 nuclear project
Today the NB government opened the first opportunity for public comment on NB Power’s ARC Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Demonstration Project proposed for Point Lepreau. During the next 30 days, First Nations and the general public have the opportunity to ensure that their concerns help to determine the topics that NB Power studies and reports on during the Environmental Impact Assessment process.
HERE is the page on our website about the ARC-100 experiment and many of the concerns we have about the project. If you share these concerns, please submit them to the government so that the impact assessment will include these topics.
How to send your comments? It’s simple: send them in an email to EIAEIE@gnb.ca. There is no word limit. The comments deadline is Oct. 28.
CRED-NB is engaging in this process, and we encourage everyone to share your concerns and thoughts. You don’t have to be a nuclear expert to voice your concerns about the safety, environmental, economic, cultural, security, and intergenerational concerns you may have about the potential impacts of this project. It’s us and those who will follow us that will live with – and pay for – those impacts.
Please share this notice widely with your networks.
Fredericton, Thursday, October 12 @ STU– Professor M.V. Ramana: “Nuclear Energy and the Bomb”
When thinking about energy transitions, the issue of nuclear weapons rarely comes to mind. Yet the connections between generating nuclear energy and the ability to make nuclear weapons have been evident since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. One connection is separating plutonium from used nuclear fuel, the technology proposed for Point Lepreau in New Brunswick. Other connections include the overlap in technical expertise and institutions.
M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
7pm • Kinsella Auditorium • 9 Duffie Drive • Fredericton • More info HERE.
Everyone is invited to this free public talk at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Hosts are the CEDAR project and the Environment and Society Program at St. Thomas University and co-hosts the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Canada (IPPNWC), the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB) and the NB Media Co-op.
CRED-NB presentation on Clean Affordable Electricity for New Brunswick
The NB Legislature’s Standing Committee on Climate Change and Environmental Stewardship met to study a clean energy strategy for New Brunswick. CRED-NB core member Tom McLean presented for our group on September 27, 2023. Here’s the archive:
Video of presentation
NB Power has its head stuck in uranium
NB Power seems to want to be a nuclear utility no matter how much it costs or whether or not the nuclear technology works because… well, just because. The utility’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) released in July states that small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) are critical to developing a clean and cost-effective power grid in New Brunswick, although NB Power does not know when, or if, SMRs will become available or the cost.
Read the full article published on Sept. 1 by the NB Media Co-op, HERE. A revised version was published by the Telegraph Journal on Sept. 28.
11 Reasons Why Nuclear Power Has No Future
Nuclear power is dirty and dangerous now and for many generations to come.
Read or download 11 Reasons Why Nuclear Power Has No Future – with links to references and supporting materials.
NB Power is kicking the can down the road while the planet burns
For Immediate Release
Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick
NB Power is kicking the can down the road while the planet burns
Rothesay, New Brunswick, August 3, 2023 – The Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB) is surprised that NB Power would produce a plan (IRP 2023) for the future electrical grid dependent on a nuclear technology that may never exist. At the same time, NB Power is rejecting the most obvious next step: accepting the federal subsidy for the Atlantic Loop to secure a regional electricity infrastructure for New Brunswickers.
In the presentation in February by CRED-NB to the NB Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Climate Change and Environmental Stewardship, we quoted the authoritative National Academies’ November 2022 report on advanced reactors: molten salt and sodium-cooled SMRs will have difficulty achieving commercial operations by 2050.
Yet the NB Power plan depends on two startup companies, Moltex from the U.K. and ARC from the U.S., neither of which has ever built a nuclear reactor, to build a SMR and make it produce electricity on the grid by 2035. We note that last year the target was 2029.
NB Power states in their IRP that: “the costs of SMRs are another significant unknown.” The NuScale SMR design, the closest to deployment in the U.S. is foreshadowing the costs to come. The NuScale SMR has been in development for more than 15 years and construction hasn’t started yet. They won’t start building it until enough customers have signed on, but more are leaving than signing on because costs have skyrocketed. The current estimated cost for NuScale SMRs with a capacity of 462 Megawatts (the same as NB Power wants to put on the grid by 2040) is $9.3-billion. That’s for a water-cooled SMR. Molten salt and liquid sodium metal designs are likely to cost far more.
Meanwhile, the planet is burning, and the clock is ticking. We must support the development of the Atlantic Loop and prioritize affordable, reliable, quickly deployed and proven solutions: energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies with storage. While we’re waiting for these SMR experiments to fail, NB Power is wasting time that we must spend urgently on genuine climate action.
– 30 –
Will an experimental nuclear reactor on the Bay of Fundy escape federal impact assessment?
On June 30, NB Power registered an environmental impact assessment with the province of New Brunswick and filed a licence application with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to prepare a site on the Bay of Fundy for the ARC-100, an experimental small modular reactor (SMR) still in early design.
Making information public about the project – which includes not just a reactor but also new aquatic infrastructure in the Bay of Fundy and new radioactive storage – as well as testing the veracity of claims made about safety, risk and impacts will be difficult if not impossible without a federal Impact Assessment, which has so far been denied.
Relying only on the provincial assessment or the CNSC’s review to inform understandings of adverse effects and impacts is a major step backwards. The provincial process has limited opportunities for public input. The CNSC’s licensing process is narrowly defined by the stage of activity being licensed (i.e., site selection, construction, operations and eventual decommissioning), meaning a review of impacts and opportunities for public engagement are spaced decades apart.
Read the full article by Susan O’Donnell and Kerrie Blaise in the NB Media Co-op HERE.