Stakeholders eye uranium report
Forum launches consultation on future of nuclear energy in Sask.
By Jeremy Warren, The Star Phoenix May 27, 2009 8:04 AM Be the first to post a comment
If you want to know who will influence the provincial government's policies on nuclear energy, the list of invitees to the first Future of Uranium meeting is a good start.
Cameco, Bruce Power, unions, academics, government officials and environmental and aboriginal groups were among the 60 organizations invited to the first day of a three-day "stakeholder" meeting.
About 35 organizations represented at Tuesday's afternoon meeting broke into three groups to go over recommendations in the Uranium Development Partnership's report, which recommended construction of a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan.
But it was what wasn't in the report that many people wanted to discuss.
The 12-member partnership board lacked medical representation, said Stefania Fortugno, an environmental lawyer and member of the Inter-Church Uranium Committee.
"These medical professionals are the people who understand the effects of radiation and its impact on animals, plants and humans," she said.
There is a lack of simple cost comparisons in the report, said NDP MLA and enterprise and innovation critic Darcy Furber.
"The people calling my office want an apples-and-apples comparison," he said.
"They want to compare the spectrum of energy resources at the same time."
Mayor Don Atchison attended and asked about the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in the U.S.
"What's being done to curtail these catastrophes in the future?" he asked.
Richard Florizone, the partnership board chair, admits his report didn't delve deep enough into one of four factors he said is crucial to bringing nuclear power to the province. Technical, environmental and economic factors of adding value to the uranium industry were covered, but the social side was lacking, he said.
"Social acceptance was recognized, but not discussed thoroughly," said Florizone, who is also the vice-president of finance and resources at the University of Saskatchewan.
"Our report, by definition, was grounded in economics and the environment."
But social acceptance is why the public meetings are happening, he added.
Tuesday's meeting at Prairieland Park started a month of public consultations that will gather questions, concerns and facts from both sides of the nuclear energy debate. Dan Perrins is chairing the Future of Uranium in Saskatchewan public consultation process.
Participants spent the first day in groups brainstorming questions and outlining concerns they felt were not adequately addressed.
The meetings, to be held across the province in June, are based on the 121-page report by the Uranium Development Partnership tasked with recommending how best to add value to Saskatchewan's uranium industry.
"If we want to sustain the uranium industry, we have to think about keeping it competitive," said Florizone in his opening remarks.
Metis Nation-Saskatchewan reiterated its disappointment in the lack of consultations with its people. A few people also wanted more information about renewable energy opportunities in Saskatchewan.
Cameco, which had a representative on the partnership, wants the province to change its mining regulations.
"The regulation process is too long," said Jamie Miley, director of government relations.
Over-regulation, mixed with aggressive uranium mine development in other countries, will soon push Saskatchewan from its perch as the world's largest uranium miner, he added.
Daron Priest, a rancher from the Lloydminster area, was one of the residents of the RM of Britannia who voted 95 per cent in favour of a motion opposed to nuclear development within its boundaries.
"We're the ones who live where this (Bruce Power nuclear reactor) is proposed and we're just regular farmers opposed to nuclear development," said Priest, adding that Saskatchewan could tap its vast resources for renewable energy.
"If we go down the nuclear road, maybe renewable energy takes a back seat. We need to keep our options open. We need common sense to prevail."
Saskatchewan will need more energy if it plans to rely on mines -- projects that use massive amounts of electricity -- for its future, and that might have to come from a nuclear reactor, said Ron Barsi from Golder Associates.
"If there ever was a budget that relied on mining, it's the latest one," he said.
"The mines are paying for our education and our hospitals."
jjwarren@sp.canwest.com
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Perrins off to good start
By Murray Mandryk, Saskatchewan News Network; Regina Leader-Post May 27, 2009
The first order of business for Dan Perrins, chair of the public consultation process on the future of nuclear development in Saskatchewan, might be to reinterpret his mandate.
The former 36-year public servant, who spent the last seven years of his career as premier Lorne Calvert's deputy minister, is mandated to chair the stakeholder and public consultation process, receive and review all written submissions and write and submit to the Minister of Enterprise and Innovation a report no later than Aug. 31, which summarizes the feedback he receives.
But what the Saskatchewan public really needs in this process is an honest broker who can preside over a series of potentially shrill, over-the-top submissions and then boil down these presentations to something that vaguely resembles an outline of a cost-benefit analysis of a nuclear power plant, taking into account the realistic concerns about the environmental impact.
The bad news is that no one can fulfil such a mandate to anyone's complete satisfaction. The good news, though, is the government has found in Perrins the best possible candidate -- someone who neither is a nuclear proponent nor opponent, who is neither directly tied to Premier Brad Wall's administration nor opposed to it, and who can be simultaneously brutally honest yet diplomatic.
However, how Perrins structures this debate may be as important as how he interprets the findings. In that regard, his first move was positive. Perrins wisely convinced the one organization that should know most about Saskatchewan's energy needs, SaskPower, to be the first presenter Tuesday.
Of course, some anti-nuclear opponents will insist that a government-run SaskPower will do nothing but advocate for nuclear power. Those who assume this obviously don't understand government as well has Perrins does.
If anything, one would assume SaskPower will be averse to giving up its near-exclusive monopoly on power-generating capacity to a private sector entity such as Bruce Power. Nuclear power opponents complain (perhaps legitimately) that Bruce already has too much of the government's ear.
Certainly, SaskPower will be reluctant to give up a sizable portion of its own generating potential to any outside interest, especially if it hurts the Crown utility's interest in clean-coal development that's tied to its generating facilities in the province's south. As much as SaskPower engineers like to build, they would prefer to do it within their own parameters.
Moreover, since nuclear isn't SaskPower's business, the utility is more capable of giving us an objective assessment of nuclear power's penchant for cost overruns that will add to public debt.
What both Perrins and the public need to carefully assess is not necessarily the rah-rah pro-nuclear cheerleading coming from vested interests such as Bruce Power and from the chambers of commerce that have been over the top in their recent support, or anything perceived as an initiative of the Saskatchewan Party government.
While one expects the cheering from the business sector, one would hope the business leadership in this province would pay special interest to the cost efficiency of nuclear power and its potential impact on the public debt.
That said, with anti-nuke presentations and submissions coming in to Perrins's consultation process at what seems to be rate of about nine to one compared to favourable submissions, there's little chance that this will be a pro-nuclear process.
In fact, Perrins's biggest challenge will be to wade through the fearmongering about a pending nuclear meltdown and get to more viable concerns such as costs and the critical impact on water flows of either the North or South Saskatchewan Rivers, which represents half the province's river flows.
It's also here where we should trust that SaskPower will serve as an honest broker that can simultaneously address the most immediate environment issues while also assessing the power grid's baseload requirements that can't be met through today's wind and solar technology.
It's not an especially easy mandate to address, but Perrins has made a couple of good initial moves.
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