Those who will not hear

Since the Saskatchewan Party tried to push nuclear power when first elected to office, it's heard from the public about their grave (and justified) concerns.

Overall, while there is some support for nuclear power generation, the overwhelming response to this public consultation was that nuclear power generation should not be a choice for Saskatchewan, whether it is intended to serve the needs of Saskatchewan people only, or for a combination of Saskatchewan people and other provinces or states.

It's heard from international financial markets that nuclear development is seen as a major risk factor.

Moody’s Investors Services warns in its new report — “New Nuclear Generation: Ratings Pressure Increasing” — that it may view nuclear construction plans as a negative.

Moody’s worries that investment in new nuclear is so costly that it amounts to a “bet the farm” strategy. It increases business risk and operating risk.

It's heard from other Canadian provinces about the lack of any economic basis for nuclear power. 

The Ontario Energy Board has indicated that any price higher than $3,600 per kilowatt of power capacity would be uneconomical when costed against alternatives such as natural gas and renewable energy options. Bruce Power has indicated its intention to build two 1,000 megawatt reactors in Saskatchewan at a cost of between $8 and $10 billion. Using Bruce Power’s conservative price estimate, its proposal works out to approximately $4,000 per kilowatt – a price that exceeds the Ontario Energy Board’s economical cutoff.

It's seen other countries phase out nuclear altogether, while facing a reckoning from decades of generating hazardous waste without a plan to manage it.

When it comes to the big questions plaguing the world's scientists, they don't get much larger than this.

Where do you safely bury more than 28,000 cubic meters -- roughly six Big Ben clock towers -- of deadly radioactive waste for the next million years? 

This is the "wicked problem" facing Germany as it closes all of its nuclear power plants in the coming years, according to Professor Miranda Schreurs, part of the team searching for a storage site. 

Experts are now hunting for somewhere to bury almost 2,000 containers of high-level radioactive waste. The site must be beyond rock-solid, with no groundwater or earthquakes that could cause a leakage. 

The technological challenges -- of transporting the lethal waste, finding a material to encase it, and even communicating its existence to future humans -- are huge.

And faced with all those voices confirming the folly of pushing nuclear power, Scott Moe's response has been...to barge ahead based on the belief he doesn't have to listen to anybody.