Far away from the noise of our provincial election, in Fukushima, Japan, authorities announced last week that rice grown 35 miles from the wreck of a nuke plant is now registering elevated contamination levels. The horror story goes on and on – and will for the next couple of hundred years.
But don’t look for fall-out here.
Six months after the disaster many said would finish off the whole notion of nuclear expertise, Liberals are being allowed (with the collusion of some enviros) to use their otherwise fine Green Energy Act to obscure a $26 billion nuke expansion plan. (And eerily, it’s windmills that have become the energy scare-story.)
As some green folk get set to vote Grit and let the anti-nuclear issue slide down the agenda, I have to wonder if we’re watching a collision between climate change activism and the broader enviro movement.
Thankfully not everyone’s willing to join an atomic denial as scary as the climate one. Besides Andrea Horwath’s call for what is effectively a nuclear moratorium, a group of 200 orgs, this week, signed on to nix the addition of new Darlington reactors.
The interesting thing about this document is the number of eco energy businesses on board, a sign of the new dynamic in the field and testament to the fact that these companies are worried about the way nuclear hogs the grid.
As well, on Thursday, Greenpeace Canada, and three other major orgs went public on a federal court action to stop government agencies from approving the Lib’s Darlington add-ons until a real enviro assessment is completed. (Earlier this month, a joint review panel set up by the feds gave thumbs up for up to four new reactors.)
Among the issues cited in the legal bid are the failure to consider the long-term effects of nuclear waste and the vast potential of green energy.
“Fundamental to an Environmental Assessment,” Greenpeace’s Shawn-Patrick Stensil tells me, “is being able to look at alternatives that have less impact on the environment. When you have the risk of irreversible harm, you have not just to mitigate it, but to eliminate it. I was in Japan in August and that was irreversible harm.”
Trained as a radiation safety advisor, Stensil was there to help set up a monitoring lab for Greenpeace. “I was in Fukushima City, 65 kms from the plant in a car and radiation was five times background,” he tells me.
“What’s spooky is that the situation is a lot like Chernobyl twenty-five years ago. There you today still find cesium in specific foods. In Japan the fisheries are closed in a 20 km area, but, of course, fish can go whereever. My colleagues live in the suburbs of Tokyo and can pick up cesium in their back yards. And the reactors are still leaking cesium – cesium 137 will stay in the environment for 300 years.”
But it wasn’t just Greenpeace trying to make nuke issues radioactive in the last week of the election campaign. They were joined by the Council of Canadians who went to Queens Park Friday with 100,000 signatures, seeking a commitment from the Libs to stop Bruce Power’s planned shipments of nuclear waste through the Great Lakes. The McGuintyites have skirted this issue by saying it’s a federal matter ecos call this nonsense.
“Dalton McGuinty did the right thing by agreeing to an environmental assessment for the Melancthon quarry just days before the election was called,” the group’s national chair, Maude Barlow, said in a release. “Now we are calling on Mr. McGuinty to do the right thing again – by clearly stating his opposition to the shipping of nuclear waste.” (See NOW’s earlier story on the shipping issue.)
Says Stensil, “Liberals are running on their green credit but most of their spending is going to the nuclear plan, so it’s a bit of a greenwash. I find it amazing: in Japan, they passed a green energy act because of Fukushima – and here it was situation normal the whole time.”
