CRED-NB is one of a dozen organizations that signed a petition for Fredericton City Council to adopt a Climate Emergency resolution. Read the resolution HERE. The resolution describes some of the effects of climate breakdown and commits Council to maintaining a safe and liveable environment through decarbonization.
Update: The Fredericton City Council reviewed and adopted the resolution in an unanimous vote on March 27. Congrats to all involved.
Moltex – a start-up company from the UK, now based in New Brunswick – has sent the government a ransom note. The company wants “more than $250 million in public funding” to develop its small modular nuclear reactor (SMR).
Speaking to the media, the company’s CEO warned “New Brunswick needs to decide if it’s in or out, because it’s a big commitment.” So far Moltex has received $50.5 million from Ottawa, $10 million from New Brunswick, and $1 million from Ontario Power Generation.
We recommend rejecting the ransom demand for more.
Citing an old saying, the economist John Maynard Keynes once observed: “Owe your banker £1000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed.” So far, Moltex has received only $60 million and is acting as if the federal and provincial governments are already at its mercy. Another $250 million, and these governments will really be on their knees.
How does Moltex have the confidence to make this demand? Ultimately because these governments have drunk the kool-aid offered by a nuclear industry that has been moribund for decades but is still powerful enough to be invited to sing its own praises at House of Commons committee hearings.
Almost exactly thirty years ago, the last new nuclear reactor began producing electricity for the grid. None has been built in Canada since. Desperate to reverse its declining fortunes, the nuclear industry began touting a new generation of reactors it dubs SMRs, using the climate crisis as a cover.
This pitch caught the fancy of Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, whose governments signed a memorandum of understanding in 2019 to aggressively promote SMRs as a climate change solution. The following year, the Natural Resources Canada Minister stated there is no path to net zero without nuclear power. Despite much evidence to the contrary, the federal government continues to argue that SMRs are needed for climate action. That mistaken belief in SMRs is what allows companies like Moltex to get public funding and demand more.
The $250 million will certainly not be the last demand. Consider NuScale, the SMR design farthest along in the U.S. regulatory process. In 2012, when NuScale estimated that “it will cost $500 million (U.S.) to obtain approval for its reactors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” the company had already invested USD 100 million in technology development. Fast forward to a decade later: NuScale reports that the “cumulative capital invested to date” is USD 1.4 billion (close to 1.9 billion CAD), with a net loss (i.e., expenditure) of USD 49.6 million just in the third quarter of 2022. And NuScale still has not obtained approval to build its first proposed SMR, projected to start operating in December 2029. Assuming all goes well, NuScale might spend more than 2.5 billion CAD, five times the original estimate, before even starting construction.
NuScale is a pressurized light water reactor design—the most widely deployed reactor design globally. In contrast, Moltex is proposing a reactor design cooled with molten salt. The last time anyone built one of these was at the Oakridge Laboratory in the United States—in the 1960s. That failed experiment provides evidence about how well such reactors might operate: long story short, we can expect lots of problems with molten salt reactors, while they operate and for decades thereafter, as society grapples with the radioactive legacy of the nuclear wastes they would produce.
A recent report by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that SMRs like the Moltex design will confront significant challenges, even for deployment by 2050, and that building such reactors at a large commercial scale will continue to need substantial government and industry investments for decades after that.
The Moltex design has an additional problem: it requires another untested technology to produce the fuel needed for its SMR. Based on a February 2021 presentation to the U.S. National Academies committee, this new technology appears similar to the pyroprocessing process tried for two decades at the Idaho National Laboratory. That experience was meant to prove the viability of pyroprocessing; instead, the significant cost overruns and schedule delays demonstrated “the numerous shortcomings of this technology.”
All these potential problems make the path forward for Moltex long and hard—and very expensive. The NuScale experience suggests that developing an SMR design to the point of securing a licence to build it could cost up to ten times what Moltex is asking for. Caving to Moltex’s demand now means falling deeper into a very deep money pit.
The graveyard of nuclear history is littered with numerous reactor designs that were never constructed because they would not have worked. Throwing more money at Moltex will not guarantee success. Wouldn’t it be best to stop now?
Susan O’Donnell is Adjunct Research Professor in the Environment & Society program at St. Thomas University, a social scientist with expertise in technology adoption, and an activist and core member of the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick. 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.
This article was published by the NB Media Co-op on March 2, 2023, HERE, after earlier publication on February 28, 2023 by the National Observer, HERE.
On Feb. 14, our Coalition made our case against SMRs to the MLAs on the Climate Change and Environmental Stewardship committee of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. Our presentation used the best scientific analysis to critique the “advanced” SMRs for development in New Brunswick. CRED-NB core member Susan O’Donnell presented on behalf of the Coalition. Our written presentation in English is HERE (and HERE in French). The video of the session is on YouTube, HERE. Check out the video to learn more about the SMR plans and what our elected representatives have to say about them.
There were 13 presentations over two days. Other presentations to watch for are, on Feb. 14: J.P. Sapinski, M.V. Ramana. On Feb. 15: Gordon Edwards, Chief Hugh Akagi + Chief Ron Tremblay + Kim Reeder, and Louise Comeau + Moe Quershi. Each has a one-hour time slot, with 20 minutes by presenters followed by 40 minutes of Q&A with the MLAs on the committee. The full schedule of presentations is HERE. The link to the video archive is HERE (scroll through or search to find the webcast archive from Feb. 14 and 15).
One of CRED-NB’s core guidelines is: “Support solidarity actions with communities experiencing harmful impacts of our energy choices in New Brunswick, across Canada and globally.” The transition to real clean energy has impacts that extend well beyond New Brunswick’s borders.
This week, a coalition of groups from the Global South released the “Manifesto for an Ecosocial Energy Transition from the Peoples of the South,” with eight core demands. CRED-NB has endorsed it. The Manifesto states that “clean energy transitions” of the North that have put even more pressure on the Global South to yield up cobalt and lithium for the production of high-tech batteries, balsa wood for wind turbines, land for large solar arrays, and new infrastructure for hydrogen megaprojects. This decarbonization of the rich, which is market-based and export-oriented, depends on a new phase of environmental despoliation of the Global South, which affects the lives of millions of women, men, and children, not to mention non-human life. In this way, the Global South has once again become a zone of sacrifice, a basket of purportedly inexhaustible resources for the countries of the North. Read the full Manifesto and support it, HERE.
Plutonium reprocessing has never been done commercially in Canada – and it was informally banned in the 1970s. Now the New Brunswick government and NB Power are supporting a plan to reprocess plutonium at the Point Lepreau Nuclear site. Reprocessing operations are the most contaminated sites in the world. So why are we planning to do it at all, and why beside the Bay of Fundy? We need to stop this plan now. Send a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, HERE.
For more information, including fact sheets, videos and links to scientific reports, check out the website of the national campaign to ban plutonium reprocessing in Canada HERE. The direct link to the factsheet on reprocessing and environmental contamination is HERE. Check out our webinar with four international experts on the topic on Feb. 28, Plutonium: How Nuclear Power’s Dream Fuel Turned into a Nightmare, info HERE.
Finally. Finally! On Feb. 14 and 15, the public has a chance to learn more about plans by the NB government and NB Power to build two experimental nuclear reactors (SMRs) at Point Lepreau on the Bay of Fundy. The NB Legislature’s standing committee on Climate Change and Environmental Stewardship is meeting that week, including two days of hearings on SMRs that will be webcast. Please tune in to learn more about the SMR plans and what our elected representatives have to say about them.
The 13 presentations over the two days each have a one-hour time slot, with 20 minutes by presenters followed by 40 minutes of Q&A with the MLAs on the committee. CRED-NB will be represented by Susan O’Donnell at 11am on Tuesday, Feb. 14. The full schedule of presentations is HERE. The link to the webcast is HERE (the webcast link will appear when the Committee is in session).
More than a dozen environmental groups including CRED-NB co-sponsored a webinar hosted by Nuclear Waste Watch: Ban Plutonium Reprocessing in Canada. The international expert panel included M.V. Ramana from the University of British Columbia, Ray Acheson Ray Acheson from Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and environmental journalist Joshua Frank, author of the recently released Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America (Haymarket Book, 2022). Watch the video HERE.
Tuesday, Feb. 28 @ 8pm Atlantic. NB Power and the NB government are supporting a plan to build a plutonium reprocessing plant at Point Lepreau on the Bay of Fundy. To inform the public about this development, CRED-NB is co-sponsoring a webinar featuring a conversation with international experts on plutonium reprocessing and nuclear weapons proliferation. With Frank von Hippel, senior research physicist and professor of public and international affairs emeritus with Princeton’s Program on Science & Global Security; Jungmin Kang, a former chairman of South Korea’s Nuclear Safety and Security Commission; Masafumi Takubo, an independent nuclear policy analyst based in Tokyo and member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials; and M. V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia. More info HERE. Register for the webinar HERE.
CRED-NB representative Gail Wylie (Council of Canadians) prepared a comment to the Energies and Utilities Board (EUB) responding to the proposed NB Power rate hike. Read or download the submission HERE. The document outlines the choices available to NB Power moving forward and includes a history of NB Power’s nuclear activities and a critique of its plans to develop SMRs.
CRED-NB member Dave Thompson of Leap Forwards made an oral presentation, text HERE. The Conservation Council of New Brunswick also submitted a document to the EUB, details HERE.
CRED-NB was represented on CBC’s The Current this morning by Susan O’Donnell. CRED-NB is fighting for a nuclear free renewable energy future. We unfortunately need to spend much of our time countering the misinformation spread by the nuclear industry (and their government collaborators).
Have a listen to the interview with The Current’s Matt Galloway. The recording HERE is the discussion between Susan and Joe McBrearty, the CEO and President of Canadian Nuclear Labs. To listen to the full segment on the CBC page, including a presentation by a nuclear energy representative in Europe, click HERE.
