Your daily debunking

Jim Harding eviscerates the spin applied by the UDP and the pro-nuke contingent as to the direction of the industry around the globe:

The Uranium Development Partnership (UDP), however, wants to perpetuate the “nuclear bubble”. What it calls “potential new nuclear capacity additions by 2020” is based on very tardy and manipulative “research”. It lists only 31 plants actually under construction, anywhere, and if you check the “Nuclear Status Report” you’ll find 11 of these have been under construction for more than 20 years. This is called “stacking the statistics.” The UDP then combines “anticipated” with “planned” reactors, a very unreliable category, to squeeze out 173 more possible plants. This includes 35 for North America, which is very farfetched, and an extreme example of the “400 % exaggeration factor”, for a recent assessment in the wake of the credit crunch and growing U.S. opposition to further nuclear loan guarantees, has only 3 new plants by 2015.

In small print we find the UDP’s sources include “press releases” and “nuclear industry publications”. We should rightly ask how, with $3 million funding from the public, the UDP was able to avoid doing original research prior to making recommendations now being brought to public “consultations”.

Of course, by the "count anything that's even been suggested" standard, the UDP would figure to have included roughly five new reactors in Saskatchewan as part of its list.

Meanwhile, ScruffyDan points out that there are serious reliability issues associated with nuclear power generation - particularly for inland reactors which rely on river water for cooling purposes. So it's lucky for us that the Wall government is willing to give the province such a great deal on its oceanfront property near Lloydminster to avoid that problem.