Dirty energy

On this page we provide information missing from the Government of New Brunswick and NB Power websites.

Dirty energy refers to fossil fuels and nuclear reactors that generate materials that are harmful or dangerous when they produce energy.

Nuclear

Nuclear energy is generated in New Brunswick at the NB Power Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. Lepreau is the only nuclear power reactor operating outside of Ontario.

NB Power is both a provincial crown corporation and the nuclear industry in New Brunswick. The VP Nuclear at NB Power is on the board of the Canadian Nuclear Association, the lobby organization in Ottawa for the nuclear industry.

NB Power, with the support of the New Brunswick government, is currently planning to develop new nuclear power capacity in the form of next generation nukes (so-called “small modular nuclear reactors – SMNRs). On this page are many information resources with facts about SMNRs.

Read or download our fact sheets

  • here: New Brunswick does not love nuclear.
  • here: Nuclear is dirty energy. It leaves an everlasting radioactive legacy.

More information resources:

  • The NB Media Co-op has published many articles about the next gen nukes proposed for New Brunswick. You can read them here.
  • Rick Cheeseman of the VOICES for Sustainable Environments and Communities group and CRED-NB produced an audio-visual presentation about the new nukes. Access it here.
  • CBC interviews with CRED-NB, here.
  • Susan O’Donnell of the RAVEN project at the University of New Brunswick and CRED-NB made a presentation to the New Brunswick Environmental Network about the proposed nuclear reactors for New Brunswick. You can access the video (31 minutes) here.
  • Sam Arnold of the Sustainable Energy Group Carleton County and CRED-NB member produced a video about the next generation nukes you can view here.
  • CRED-NB co-hosted a webinar about the new nukes with the international group, Beyond Nuclear. You can access the video and slide presentations here.
  • Read articles published by members of CRED-NB about the new nuclear reactors, here.
  • A recent article about next generation nukes in New Brunswick by Gordon Edwards, Michel Duguay and Pierre Jasmin provides a good overview of the issues involved, read it here.
  • CRED-NB was formed by the groups hosting the visit by Dr. Gordon Edwards to New Brunswick in March 2020. A video of his webinar presentation was published by the NB Media Co-op. A transcript of the video is available here.
  • Our friends in the group Clean Green Saskatchewan prepared this fact sheet about the new nukes with some interesting information, here.
  • Nuclear power creates dangerous radioactive waste that needs to be kept out of the environment for many generations. Nuclear plants need to contain it. However Canada currently lacks an adequate national radioactive waste policy, as highlighted in a letter to the Prime Minister signed by 100 groups across Canada, including CRED-NB, available here.
  • Read this comprehensive document produced by the Save the World project based in Toronto: Radiation and the Nuclear Fuel Chain, available here.
  • Have a look at the excellent Uranium Atlas, free for download from our friends at Beyond Nuclear.
  • Opposition to nuclear energy in New Brunswick has a long history, including the period 2007-2013 when the Nuclear-Free New Brunswick campaign was ongoing. The campaign archives are here.

Fossil Fuels

There are seven fossil fuel-burning electrical generating stations in the province. The NB Power Belledune Generating Station is the only plant in the province that runs on coal; coal-burning power plants must be phased out by 2030 to comply with federal regulations. The other fossil fuel plants in the province run on either natural gas or oil.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. According to the IPCC, to stabilize the climate and avoid catastrophic extreme weather events, we need to rapidly decrease our use of fossil fuels for energy.