Core issues

It's never been much of a secret that nuclear development was going to be a key issue in the Saskatchewan NDP leadership race - and two of the candidates are taking strong stances in the face of an impending vote on a Sask Party motion. But while it's not surprising to see positions being staked out for later, it's worth noting that there wouldn't seem to be much basis for disagreement when it comes to the motion itself.

On the policy side, both Yens Pedersen and Ryan Meili have come out with strong arguments against nuclear development generally. Here's Pedersen in his earlier blog post:

Why would we go with the most dangerous, most complex and one of the most expensive options, when we have safer, simpler and cheaper options available? I am not opposed to new technology, but I do insist that there be clear benefits to embracing new technology which outweigh the costs. In all the research that I have done over the last year (which is a lot), it is clear to me that the costs associated with proven nuclear technology outweigh the benefits. The benefits are:

-a tremendous ability to produce energy from a relatively small amount of material (but the real issue is not the quantity of material, rather the energy return on energy expended),
-economic development, and
-a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The costs and risks are significant, including:

-the low (but still significant) risk of an enormous incident,
-the health costs of exposing a population to ongoing low level radiation (which we are just beginning to understand),
-the economic costs of building the reactor (no reactor has ever been built without taxpayer money),
-the economic costs of ’spinning reserves’ (backup power) equal to the size of the reactor required for NERC standards,
-the economic costs of building transmission lines (at $1.5 million/km),
-the economic costs of the costs of decommissioning (which are huge and will fall to the taxpayer),
-the risk of building a reactor which may not work (eg. Gentilly 1, the Maples) or which fails before the capital investment is recovered, and
-the economic costs of permanent waste storage (which hasn’t been proven or developed yet anywhere in the world).

You also have to compare the options that we have available - in which case you find that there is better economic development with renewable energy (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass), more grid reliability with renewable energy, better greenhouse gas reductions with renewables, and less concern about the availability of water with renewables. Despite the protestations of dinosaurs stuck in old paradigms, other places in the world are showing that renewables like wind and solar can be integrated into the power grid in much greater proportions than we are currently doing. The best dollar spent is on conservation and efficiency which could reduce our electricity demand by at least 10%. We could easily expand our wind power production 9 fold.

And Meili from today's press release:

• Nuclear power isn’t cheap. A nuclear reactor is a very expensive undertaking and the people of Saskatchewan will pay for it on their electricity bills for a long time to come, if it is allowed to be built. We pay 10 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity now. Whether its Bruce Power or SaskPower, no one will build a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan for less than 20 cents per kilowatt hour – double the current price of electricity. That simple fact is why most private sector utilities in the United States have been avoiding nuclear power – they know there are too many hidden costs and that most nuclear power construction projects have huge cost over-runs. Add to that expensive repair bills, the high cost of disposing of radioactive nuclear fuel waste and the very high cost of decommissioning a radioactive reactor core. When compared to wind power at 11 cents per kilowatt hour and electricity conservation at less than 6 cents per kilowatt hour, nuclear power’s economics make no sense.

• Nuclear power puts our environment at risk. Yes, nuclear power can reduce the carbon footprint. But that assumed you ignore the massive carbon emissions involved in building the reactor – particularly if it is built in a remote area. A nuclear reactor will also produce intensely radioactive waste materials which no country on earth has successfully disposed of. Why should the next generation of Saskatchewan residents bear the burden of disposing of this radioactive waste material, with the worry that it must be kept out of ground water supplies for tens of thousands of years into the future.

• Nuclear power doesn’t address our immediate energy needs. Nuclear reactors are not designed and built quickly. Sites are not chosen quickly. Even if the process started today, it would be nearly 20 years before a proposed nuclear facility contributed a single watt to the energy grid.

• Nuclear power doesn’t address our long-term energy needs either. It is simply another non-renewable resource which, by current projections, will have exhausted itself well within a century and possibly within a generation.

Of course there are some subtle differences in the two positions: in particular, Meili's stance rightly takes issue with two of the supposed positives mentioned by Pedersen, as nuclear development is neither sustainable indefinitely nor necessarily an effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But on the whole, it's certainly a plus.

But what about the political side? Here's where it gets interesting from today's statements. First, Pedersen's statement makes a couple of noteworthy diversions from the pure policy issue:

He says nuclear power is expensive and risky — with dangers to health and the environment that are not fully known. Pedersen says if politicians think it's safe, they should build a nuclear power plant on Wascana Lake near the legislature or in downtown Saskatoon.

Now, there are some problems with Pedersen's geographic argument. To the extent one perceives the reports created to date as reasonable assessments of potential development, it would be implicit that other sites such as Saskatoon or (particularly) Regina would lack some of the factors which have resulted in reactors being proposed for elsewhere in the province - meaning that the ultimate problem is with the credibility of the reports, not necessarily a politically-driven choice as to where to potentially place a reactor.

Pedersen then went to say this:

Pedersen is also worried that if the NDP supports nuclear power, it could push rank-and-file New Democrats to vote for the Green party.

"This is not some innocuous statement about 'considering' options — it is a slanted and one-sided motion and supporting it could cause thousands of Saskatchewan people to 'consider' supporting the Green party," he said in a news release.

As I'll get to below, Pedersen's take seems to be exactly right in describing the motion. But it's interesting to see him publicly raise the danger of losing votes to the Greens in that context, offering a high-profile mention to one of the NDP's competitors which normally wouldn't seem to be the subject of much direct attention from the party even if it shares some common areas of concern.

Meanwhile, Meili's press release takes a shot at Dwain Lingenfelter's position that a "blue-ribbon panel" could justify nuclear development:

Many of us will remember countless expert panels on this issue over the years. My fellow leadership candidate Dwain Lingenfelter has proposed a panel of his own to study this issue. Many progressive activists have become quite cynical about these “studies / panels / commissions.” Too often, their final recommendations have appeared to be predetermined. That is certainly so in this case. It is likely to be the case regardless of who appoints the panel.
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We need to consider our energy future. Limiting that consideration to an either-or discussion of nuclear power narrows the debate and ignores our best options.

There's certainly plenty of force to Meili's critique that any study aimed solely at discussing nuclear development has the effect of narrowing the perceived options available. And that figures to make for the main point of disagreement within the NDP's leadership race.

But it's worth noting that even Lingenfelter's proposed panel would "explore the costs and benefits of nuclear power". Which would seem to me to stand in stark contrast to the rah-rah position of the Sask Party motion, which tries to tie nuclear development to "growth and prosperity" with absolutely no hint of the costs or risks involved.

So while there are significant areas of difference between the leadership candidates on some aspects of nuclear development, there shouldn't be much reason for any split within the NDP when it comes to Thursday's vote.