Uranium Isn't Missed

I was very upset to read the article in this morning's Chronicle Herald entitled Uranium ban "A Lost Opportunity". The article is based on an interview with Ken Chernin of Acadian Securities. Since Mr. Chernin is in the financial industry, which has a long history of only looking for profits and never taking into the unaccounted costs of environmentally unfriendly business practices, I wasn't as upset with him as I was with NS Natural Resources Minister David Morse.

Minister Morse replied to Mr. Chernin's comments by saying that the "science is credible" and he wants to know what Nova Scotian's think. I was so upset by his comments that I wrote a letter to the editor of the CH. I've included this letter below in the likely case that it isn't published. However, being limited to 200 words, I wasn't able to fit in everything wrong with this article.

My major concern is that our government talks the sustainability-and-green-economy talk, but then turns around and says "nuclear energy is part of the solution". There are many many issues with this.. including

• mining uranium is absolutely devastating to local ecology, causing radioactive pollution to both the workers that mine and contamination of local flora and fauna
  
• nuclear development is extremely expensive, and traditionally requires millions of dollars of government investment and subsidy to even get started
• although little GHG Emissions are emitted in producing nuclear energy, the process of mining Uranium is extremely emission intense
• centralized energy works against renewable energy production
• storage of radioactive waste is still a unsolved issue
• production of nuclear energy causes extremely large amounts of water loss due to vapour.
• Both Uranium mining and nuclear production would have to be done by out of province companies, ensuring that any profits from these activities end up far from Nova Scotia.
  

I wonder if Mr Chernin was considering all these negative aspects when he said "it couldn't hurt".

On top of all these issues is the fact that what our government should be doing is increasing energy efficiency and encouraging locally owned distributed renewable energy, as I mention in my letter below.

Nova Scotians need to be aware that Nuclear Energy is on the agenda of both our current government, and our privately held monopoly utility, and we all need to make it very clear that is isn't on the agenda of the people of this province.

Uranium Isn't Missed

The comments from Natural Resource Minister David Morse in response to the interview with Ken Chernin from Acadian Securities should cause all Nova Scotians great concern. (Uranium Ban "A missed Opportunity" - Oct 12) Mr. Chernin is right that we are missing opportunities in Nova Scotia , but he is wrong that those opportunities lie in spending huge amounts of money to mine and develop Uranium in Nova Scotia. The missed opportunities are the two basic principals that NS should be embracing in order to effectively reduce emissions, and increase sustainability and energy security: renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Minister Morse wants to know what Nova Scotians think about spending “enormous capital expenditures” to locate uranium deposits, and eventually pillage our landscape to spread radioactive waste around our beautiful province. How can he not know the answer to this question???

To remind him: Nova Scotians have made it very clear. They want NS to keep its Uranium Ban, and they want the government to live up to its promises from 2002 regarding renewable energy and come up with a better plan for the $10 Million Clean Nova Scotia budget to encourage efficiency than giving away free CFLs!