Durham Nuclear Awareness …

Durham Nuclear Awareness (DNA), based in Durham Region, an area home to 10 aging nuclear reactors at two very large nuclear facilities, would like to offer comments on the province’s proposed Long-term Energy Plan (LTEP).

 

We find:

 

•The plan utterly biased in favour of nuclear energy, resulting in anything but a “level playing field”

 

•A failure to reflect nuclear’s true risks and costs – either in economic terms, or in environmental ones

 

•10 aging reactors on the shores of a lake providing drinking water to millions of citizens constitutes a spectacularly unacceptable risk, especially in light of what has been learned from the Fukushima nuclear disaster

 

•A nuclear catastrophe (possible at any nuclear plant, anywhere; let no one claim otherwise!) could eliminate for good the drinking water for those millions of people (on both sides of the Canada/U.S. border)

 

•A failure to address the reality of the ever-ongoing creation of impossibly, unimaginably toxic & long-lived nuclear wastes; this is irresponsible in the extreme, and indeed likely contravenes the Ministry of Energy’s own Statement of Environmental Values!

 

•Ontario habitually plays a sleight-of-hand game, acting as though it is not responsible for nuclear matters, passing these off as federal matters, when indeed Ontario owns the nuclear waste, is responsible for off-site nuclear emergency plans & preparations, and also for setting drinking water standards for tritium – yet routinely shirks the carrying out of these responsibilities

 

•Ontario must abandon untried, pie-in-the sky future schemes like SMRs; these are not anywhere near ready for use, would be prohibitively expensive to develop and operate, & merely perpetuate the same-old, same-old nuclear risks

 

•Ontario must abandon the horrendously flawed DGR scheme to bury nuclear wastes right beside Lake Huron. This deeply flawed, dangerous and poorly-thought-out project has already cost untold millions of taxpayer dollars, and offers no long-term safety, protection or viability whatsoever.

 

The Road Ahead?

 

1.Accept responsibility openly for what the Province is indeed responsible for.

 

2.Reduce subsidies for dirty, dangerous nuclear energy.

 

3.Assess alternatives to nuclear waste production.

 

4.Tell the truth about the real risks involved in the use of nuclear energy - its inevitable risks and costs, economically, environmentally

 

5.and with respect to human health.

 

6.Always prioritize

 

•Reduction of demand

 

•Conservation measures

 

•Development of a solidly 100% renewable energy future.

 

[Original Comment ID: 207131]