If elected to the Legislature on November 7th, Saskatchewan Green Party MLAs would immediately act to introduce legislation to ban not only nuclear waste storage in the province but also outlawing the transport of high level nuclear waste through Saskatchewan.
The Green Party said this move would help Saskatchewan catch up with Manitoba, where storing nuclear waste as banned in 1989.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is in discussion with the communities of Pinehouse, Patuanak (English River) and Creighton about the construction of a facility to store highly radioactive waste from the five nuclear reactor sites in eastern Canada. The Green Party argues there is no known way of reducing the radioactivity of this waste, which will continue to be a risk to human health for hundreds of thousands of years.
The Green Party wants to ban nuclear waste storage because:
1. At the present time there is no certainty that nuclear waste can be safely contained. The science being used to justify the NWMO's plans is incomplete. Saskatchewan Green Party deputy leader Dr. Mark Bigland-Pritchard stated, "Their science is not watertight, and, according recent research, neither are the NWMO's proposed canisters. Once a radioactive leak has begun, it will be virtually impossible to stop."
2. This nuclear waste is southern Ontario's problem, not ours. Power reactors in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick take ordinary uranium and change it into substances thousands of times more toxic than the original. This is not Saskatchewan's responsibility, and it is irresponsible to pose this threat to the people and ecosystems of Saskatchewan.
3. Transporting the waste from Ontario puts far too many people at risk along the route. It would need to be trucked across Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan to the dump site - an average of 12 shipments per week for at least 30 years. How can the NWMO guarantee that there will be no accidents? Can they promise that human error or criminal action will never breach the security of the canisters holding these lethal materials? The most likely shipping routes pass through Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert. This puts the majority of the province's population at risk -- in addition to the northern communities close to the proposed site.
4. The proposed respository depends heavily on planning, skills and staff from Ontario. It is unlikely to provide more than a few permanent local jobs. Northern Saskatchewan is the second poorest area in all of Canada: large mining corporations based in southern Canada or overseas have failed, despite many promises, to bring prosperity. Bigland-Pritchard argued, "Uranium mining companies have been in the north for decades, and they have created very few local jobs. Do we have any reason to believe that the NWMO would do any better?"
Therefore, the Green Party stands with those who are resisting the nuclear dump proposal - and especially commends the work of the Committee for Future Generations, whose anti-dump petition has already been signed by the majority of Pinehouse residents.
"Northerners have been telling us that their route to prosperity must be consistent with their traditional understanding of the land. Projects should be planned at a local level but with adequate start-up resources from the provincial government. There are tremendous income generation opportunities in value-added forest products, fish processing, tourism and adventure camps, sustainable forestry, and green energy from forestry residue, solar and wind," Bigland-Pritchard said.
The Green Party also opposes any plan to develop nuclear power reactors for Saskatchewan. The cost alone should rule out the nuclear option. A 2009 price quote in Ontario came in at more than 20 cents per kWh - Saskatchewan householders currently pay just over 10 cents per kWh. In addition to the cost, nuclear power also poses a major threat to human health. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants in Japan are still releasing radioactive poisons on a large scale seven months after the original accident. Thousands of people evacuated from their homes will probably never be able to return.
Rather than put the people of Saskatchewan at such risk, the Green Party would roll out an aggressive programme of energy efficiency and a rapid transition to safe, clean, sustainable energy.
