[MolsonExport]

Nuclear plants ill-prepared for worst-case scenarios, report says

Anyone remember this unhappy amber alert?

ctv

How the Soviet Union stayed silent during the Chernobyl disaster

Pembina Institute report on the benefits and risks of nuclear power in Canada: https://www.pembina.org/reports/Nuclear_web.pdf

The study finds that nuclear power, like other non-renewable energy sources, is associated with severe environmental impacts. Each stage of the nuclear energy production process generates large amounts of uniquely difficult-to-manage wastes that will effec-tively require perpetual care, imposing costs and risks arising from current energy consumption onto future generations. The process also has severe impacts on surface water and groundwater water quality via a range of radioactive and hazardous pollutants, and results in releases to the atmosphere of a wide range of criteria (i.e. smog and acid-rain causing), radioactive and hazardous pollutants and greenhouse gases. Effluent from uranium mines and mills was found by Health Canada and Environment Canada to be ‘toxic’ for the purposes of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in 2004.

What is particularly noteworthy about the radio-active waste streams produced at every stage of the nuclear life cycle are the timeframes over which these materials will need to be managed. Secure containment will be required for not hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of years – timeframes over which it is extremely difficult, if not virtually impossible, to predict outcomes with any level of assurance. There are no approved long-term strategies for the management of these wastes in place. The federally mandated Nuclear Waste Management Organization expects it will take over 300 years to implement its proposed “phased adaptive management” approach to containing waste nuclear fuel. As well, the effectiveness and adequacy of tailings management facilities at mine sites in Canada has been subject to serious question. There is a long history of uranium mine tailings management facility failures in Canada and elsewhere in the world, resulting in severe surface water and groundwater contamination.

While nuclear generating facility operators argue that the levels of public exposure to radiation arising from facility operations are trivial in comparison to other sources, recent studies suggest that health impacts of low-level radiation exposure may be more significant than previously thought, and that children and infants may be particularly at risk from such exposures. Nuclear generating facilities are additionally subject to uniquely severe accident and security risks. A serious accident or incident could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material to the atmosphere, which could be distributed over a large area. By comparison, the impacts of major incidents or accidents at facilities employing other generating technologies would be short term and largely limited to the facility site itself. It has been estimated that the monetized value of the off-site environmental, health and economic impacts of a major accident at the Darlington generating facility east of the City of Toronto, for example, would exceed $1 trillion (1991 $Cdn)