Tag: CRED-NB Action

NB government’s energy plan is ignoring reality

NB government’s energy plan is ignoring reality.

Rothesay, New Brunswick, December 13, 2023 – The Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB) is astounded that the NB government would produce an energy plan that ignores the reality of where energy systems and the global energy economy are headed.

Tom McLean, of CRED-NB, said “Today, at the conclusion of the UN climate change conference, COP28, the global community committed to triple the use of renewables and transition away from fossil fuels. It makes no sense for New Brunswick to plan to frack fossil gas when the world is deploying wind turbines and solar panels.”

The government’s plan is also based on a nuclear technology that may never exist. 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 U.S. National Academies’ of Sciences 2023 report. It states that the advanced reactors planned for New Brunswick, ­ molten salt and sodium-cooled, ­ will have difficulty achieving commercial operations even by 2050.

“Premier Higgs’ energy plan is not sensible, sustainable or just,” said Ann McAllister, Chair of CRED-NB. “Fracking for fossil gas has no social license in NB due to its health and pollution risks. Hydrogen production is so expensive and inefficient that it makes more economic sense to use the electricity directly.

The SMRs proposed for New Brunswick will come too late to reduce carbon emissions now, when we need them. To export them would provide client countries who don’t yet have nuclear weapons with the plutonium to produce them. This is not the plan we need in these times of climate change and escalating global conflict.”

Meanwhile, the planet is burning, and the clock is ticking. While we’re waiting for these nuclear SMR experiments to fail, the government is wasting time that we must spend urgently on genuine climate action.

CRED-NB recommends guidelines for the ARC-100 Environmental Impact Assessment

NB Power is proposing to develop an experimental nuclear reactor design, the ARC-100, on the Point Lepreau nuclear site on the Bay of Fundy. The Government of New Brunswick, which is funding and promoting the project, will also conduct the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The government asked the public to provide feedback on the draft EIA guidelines. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this important effort! The CRED-NB submission to the guidelines consultation is HERE. Our page with information about the ARC-100 is HERE.

New video: Nuclear Energy and the Bomb

Most people around the world learned about power of the atom from newspapers on August 7, 1945 after the U.S. military dropped a nuclear bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in Japan and killed or injured 140,000 people. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second bomb on the city of Nagasaki.

After the war, governments realized that nuclear energy to generate electricity would be unacceptable to the population unless people could be convinced that it was completely separate from nuclear weapons. The U.S. began an “atoms for peace” propaganda campaign to convince Americans to accept nuclear energy despite their knowledge of its terrible destructive power. The campaign to deny the link between the two continues today in every country that has nuclear energy, including Canada.

CRED-NB was co-host of a lecture by University of British Columbia professor M.V. Ramana on Oct. 12 at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. The link between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons “is a truth that has been systematically masked” says Ramana. See the video HERE.

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

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.

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.

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.

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Update on the ARC-100 project

The Government of New Brunswick just posted online the EIA registration document for the ARC-100 SMR that NB Power proposes to develop at the Point Lepreau nuclear site on the Bay of Fundy. The full document pdf, 297 pages, is HERE.

Some background:

The ARC-100 project is currently exempt from the Impact Assessment Act, so it will not require a federal review. There is currently an outstanding request filed March 31 to Minister Guilbeault from the Sierra Club Canada, We the Nuclear Free North, Protect Our Waterways and CRED-NB. We asked the Minister to designate the project for an Impact Assessment. We are awaiting the response, which is way overdue, from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada. This was our second attempt for an IA designation. More info HERE.

Without the federal IA, we’re stuck with the NB provincial EIA and CNSC review, which will not cover all the activities within the lifespan of the project, from development through to decommissioning, including project impacts that are direct or incidental to the project. We know that the federal IA is itself inadequate but it would at least give many of us with concerns about the project to bring all our concerns to the public.