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Proposal text
Be it resolved that the Green Party of Canada long conflicted between the horror of nuclear weapons and the need to support reliable and clean nuclear power,
• will adopt a view of nuclear power that is consistent with the best scientific knowledge and practices, and
• will advocate for the continued development of nuclear power technologies, extraction technologies, nuclear waste disposal, and alternative nuclear fuels.
Type of Proposal
Public policy that the party would represent
Objective / Benefit
The GPC has a longstanding public position of preferring renewable power generation instead of nuclear power generation. Yet not one policy currently addresses the beneficial effects of nuclear power. All policy references to nuclear are to the prevention and control of nuclear weapons.
The objective of this policy is to establish a new policy that addresses the benefits of the use of nuclear power generation in a changing environment that urgently needs reliable power generation.
- Whereas the policies of the Green Party of Canada are to be based on scientific principles, and
- Whereas we now know how to build nuclear power plants that are far safer than our current operational designs, and
- Whereas nuclear power generation can be demonstrated,
- to be the least polluting of all electricity generation technologies, in terms of CO2 production per MW of capacity,
- to have the smallest footprint in terms of station size, acres per MW of installed capacity,
- to have the lowest volume of waste production in terms of tons per MW,
- to require the least input of scarce resources in terms of tons per MW,
- to have the best safety record of all generation facilities in terms of loss of human life per MW of installed capacity, and
- Whereas we do know what to do with spent nuclear fuel to ensure safety.
This policy will complement and expand the policies of the Green Party of Canada, making them more appropriate in an intellectually honest way.
If your proposal replaces an existing policy or policies, which one does it replace?
This is new policy. All existing policy addresses various aspects of the undesirability of nuclear weapons. It does not in any way reduce the relevance of those policies.
List any supporting evidence for your proposal
1. Jack Devanney, The Two Lies that killed nuclear:
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-two-lies-that-killed-nuclear
2. Jack Devanney, Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop:
3. Cleo Abram, The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzQ3gFRj0Bc
4. Burning Nuclear waste:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u44skO-nMo
5. IEA on Nuclear Power:
https://www.iea.org/energy-system/electricity/nuclear-power
6. Our World in Data, Death Toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima:
https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima
7. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, LNT:
https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/resources/health/linear-non-threshold-model/index.cfm
8. Original text of this proposal: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j5bvh4dagagllrhus59h9/GPC-Nuclear.docx?rlkey=8ozj24vcajsvofrtgtpy9pt85&st=uvmsga8g&dl=0
Does this proposal affect any particular group and what efforts have been made to consult with the group or groups?
There are many in the party and outside, who consider Nuclear Power to be so dangerous as to be categorically denied as a solution to our future power needs. This policy reverses that perception of Nuclear Power. It is likely to alienate such people in their support of the party.
There is also likely to be an adverse reaction from the Global Greens, which would need to be carefully managed, though it is to be hoped that this motion will start a greens-wide reassessment of their positions on nuclear power.
Jurisdiction: Is this proposal under federal jurisdiction?
Yes
Please indicate the language the proposal is being submitted in.
English
This proposal is being evaluated
Posted on the Continuous Motion Development Vote tab for member review prior to the all-member vote.
Amendments (3)
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Created at
24/05/2024 -
- 0
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Created at
05/07/2024 -
- 0
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Created at
10/07/2024 -
- 2
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Conversation with Mr. Colin Griffiths
I've just come across some numbers that confirm for me that our fear of radiation is irrational, quoted by Jack Devanney in the Gordian Knot.
At 1 mGy a day, no cellular damage from radiation is detectable, ie 100 times the background level.
It takes about 20 mGy a day before cellular damage is detectable, ie 2000 times the background level.
Our DNA is constantly subject to chemical attacks by oxygen radicals. This daily damage is equivalent to radiation damage caused by 250 mGy per day, 20,000 times the background level. Yet we survive. Our bodies repair the damage.
The evidence of cancer caused by radiation is real, but grossly over exaggerated. Radiation is not the bogeyman we consistently make it out to be.
"Our fear of radiation is irrational"...? Tell that to the families of the ill, injured and dead from Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island and many other nuclear disasters and accidents...very disrespectful... :-(
Is our fear of radiation still irrational after seeing all of these pictures, Mr Griffiths?
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/horrifying-photos-of-chernobyl-and-its-aftermath/
And you're quoting a guy who has been around shipyards, oil tankers and nuclear power plants his whole life?! Really?
The disagreement is factual, not moral in nature: I say Three Mile Island likely didn't cause any radiation deaths, you say it did. We should be resolving this based on evidence, so here is some.[1] At Fukushima there was one potentially radiation-caused death so far[2]. However, there were over a thousand deaths caused by the mandatory relocation, which I believe was driven by fear of radiation.[3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Health_effects_and_epidemiology
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45423575
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4YsXeX8c7M
To come at it from another angle: can you imagine what would happen if the Liberal party had to decide the most important facts about a topic based on the popular opinion of 100 experts in that topic?
This is completely opposed to how parties normally work. Normally the party members choose which facts are credible and pick experts who definitely agree that the credible facts are, in fact, facts. Doesn't matter if it's Liberal, Conservative, Republican or Democrat. The people _choose_ the facts, maybe even vote on them, then they pick popular experts who conform to the facts: Republicans pick Roy Spencer and Judith Curry to prove the science isn't settled; Democrats pick Michael Mann and Mark Z Jacobson, because while thousands of climate scientists agree AGW is real, the Right Choice is whoever is popular with Democrats.
Humans do cause climate change, of course, but that doesn't mean a typical person has good reasons to believe it. For example, if you believe it because 97% of experts agree, congratulations, that's a pretty good reason (although I investigated that very issue and the results are not necessarily as you expect[1]).
But if you believe it because all your friends think so and you hate those anti-science Republicans and "everyone knows it's true", those are very bad reasons, sorry.
Suppose you then watch many YouTube videos offering two dozen reasons why AGW is Definitely Real, and then you learn all 24 reasons and repeat them all over the place, and one of the reasons is "97% of climate scientists agree". Do you have good evidence now? No because the "97%" line is merely a bullet in your gun, something you shoot at conservatives to annoy them, it's not the real reason you believe what you believe. Even if you later decide that "97%" is the "best" argument, I would be very skeptical as to whether your belief in AGW is reasonable, drenched as it is in confirmation bias.
The problem is that this way of deciding the truth is basically like a MAGA Republican who hates those "woke deep-state Democrats" and whose friends all agree that climate change is natural (as everybody who took the red pill knows) so he watches lots of Rumble videos on the topic and memorizes 24 reasons why humans don't cause climate change and it hardly changed in the first place.
I actually have insider knowledge of where "97%" came from in Cook et al 2013. But on YouTube, someone told me that ACTUALLY Cook et al 2013 found a consensus over 99% but then for some reason (which I have forgotten, sorry) it just got reported as 97%. I left without saying another word, but that BS left an impression on me.
Political party members believe a lot of true things, because wrong methods often find correct conclusions. I oppose wrong methods, though. I don't know where your conclusion came from, so it's hard to judge. But I can promise you that I am VERY principled about what I believe.
[1] https://dpiepgrass.medium.com/scrutinizing-the-consensus-numbers-70faf9200a0c
With that in mind, your next question is:
I do want peace, non-violence and prosperity―intensely. But I rarely say "believe in". Is "believing in" different from wanting? If an evil emperor forces me into a fight to the death, I still want peace, but that's separate from whether I defend myself once in the arena. I may let myself be killed, but not because I "believe in peace". A virtue ethicist may say "we must dismantle our nuclear weapons, for it is virtuous. Yes, credible reports found that the dictator next door plans to nuke us afterward, but it's morally irrelevant." A consequentialist says "the consequences of nuclear weapon use would be catastrophic, so we should work extremely hard to avoid it. Disgusting though it is, dismantling our weapons NOW will not prevent nuclear attack, so we must not YET." (I think the most common moral system is "whatever I feel like": if you "feel" something is wrong, it is; if you feel it's right, it is. This one tends to cause interpersonal conflicts so I recommend against.)
Why do I push it strongly? Partly it's because the global warming issue is very important, and partly it's more personal: no party really represents me. The Liberals and Conservatives don't, because they are wrong on so many issues. But with a few tweaks, I suspect the Green party could.
The most important tweak would not be nuclear power, but respect for evidence, which is often ambiguous. By analogy: I mentioned I support Ukraine, but I can't count how many times pro-Ukraine people ticked me off by jumping to conclusions or saying untrue things that they wholeheartedly believed. I oppose such behavior, not because they are enemies but because they are allies. Such behavior can cause bad consequences. Do you think when a pro-nuclear guy pointed me to 4 studies on pro-nuclear site x-lnt.org, I just believed them? Not at all; they seem like cranks. Did I jump to the conclusion they're cranks? No, I found the papers. Did x-lnt link to them? No, I had to look them up. I'm not asking others do such work; rather I'd ask that the party SURVEY experts, and disavow cherry-picking them.
Airplanes were dangerous in the 1960s; now they'e thousands of times safer than driving. That's a utilitarian outcome: investigators worked tirelessly to understand what caused every single accident, then found ways to increase safety _without_ making airplanes too expensive.
A utilitarian would be appalled if airplanes had a perfect safety record, but deaths on highways skyrocketed because only the wealthiest could afford to fly. That wouldn't be a moral victory but a moral failure. My support for nuclear energy follows similar logic.
[1] https://dpiepgrass.medium.com/the-universal-morality-15c2a2fbe558
I can't reply directly to you Evan, but yes, I can empathize with the victims of nuclear tragedies, of course.
I also do something unusual, and that is, I care about numbers. Tremendously.
An evil man once said "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." Sometimes evil speaks true. Not sure if he was saying how he got away with killing millions or what. But the point stands: empathy can care about one person very deeply. It can't care 100 times as much about 100 people, let alone a million times more about a million.
One of the modern philosophers I follow made a simple video I love very much.[1] He said:
"Numbers matter ethically.
"What i mean by this _isn't_ that there is some philosophical theory that tells us that killing more people is worse than killing few people, that utilitarian philosophies argue for this, no. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that killing 10 people is a crime 10 times worse than killing one person. What I'm saying is that ethically we have to insist, and it's politically constructive for us to insist[...] that when the Russians kill a thousand Ukrainians that's a crime ten times worse than the crime, the appalling crime, of killing a hundred Ukrainians."
"This is because every human life is real and every human life matters equally."
I watched with horror as the Ukraine conflict unfolded over the last two years. I estimate over 200,000 Ukrainians and Russians have been killed -- yet Putin's unspeakable crime continues. I wanted to give to Ukraine aid. I even gave $1,000 in 2022. But EOY 2023 when I decided to give $10,000 to charity at the end of the year, I didn't give it to Ukraine. I gave it to the Against Malaria Foundation. And why? Because numbers matter. Charity evaluators estimated I could save about 1.5 children's lives with $10K (easily one of the most effective lifesaving methods statistically known). I couldn't find an efficient way to save lives in Ukraine. I didn't empathize with malaria sufferers, I empathized with Ukrainians. But as per GWWC rules[2], the numbers won.
I'm told it's exhilarating to save a life. Statistically I probably saved a life, but it doesn't feel that way, so it's not exhilarating. That's the sacrifice of giving far more to faceless Africans than to people I know like Denys Dadydov, Anna and NFKRZ. (see [3] for more philosophy.)
So if you want to argue morals, fine. But my moral argument is that morality is downstream of facts, numbers and evidence. The evidence must lead to the verdict and not the reverse. So you cannot appeal to morality to show that TMI was deadly, or to empathy to show that Fukushima is worse than the Banqiao collapse.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eHetWKCHic
[2] https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/pledge
[3] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-fuzzies-and-utilons-separately
No sir, the disagreement is not limited to one thing or another, all factors are related and need to be considered - moral, ethical, factual, risk, etc.
And just because something dangerous doesn't necessarily cause incredible harm on a large scale doesn't mean that it can't or won't, or that it should be discounted either for the harm that it has caused already...
Do you have any empathy for the victims of these nuclear tragedies and accidents? And to follow up on that, if you are a Green Party member who believes in peace and non-violence, why are you so strongly pushing nuclear power (which is inherently dangerous as an energy source and even riskier as a potential catalyst for conflict on a larger scale - war risk)?
Further, stop limiting the harm that past nuclear disasters have caused just to try to improve your flawed argument - Three Mile Island has numerous conflicting studies, of which some indicate increases in cancers (which some of which would have led to fatalities), Fukushima had one immediate recorded death (not "potentially") and over TWO thousand related deaths in the years following (not ONE thousand) and you didn't even mention Chernobyl because it harms your argument the most (30+ deaths officially recorded immediately, but based on different studies, there could be hundreds to thousands more deaths among citizens throughout Asia and Europe for various reasons) - have a little respect for the victims, their families and their communities...
I am skeptical of this number (1 mSv, or 1 mGy per day of γ radiation). Jack provides evidence for it on his Substack, but is there any other nuclear expert who vouches for it? A wise man once said, "Beware the Man of One Study". If an idea comes from one guy, or one small team, there is reason to be suspicious, and I tend to question the wisdom of relying so heavily on one of the world's foremost pro-nuclear voices to sway the traditionally anti-nuclear Green Party. (And you would appreciate this if I cheered for "100% renewables" and asked you to take Mark Z Jacobson's word for it[1].)
The thing is, while the numbers from NASA[2] are much more conservative, they support basically the same conclusion: that people are generally much more afraid of radiation than is justified. But finding any risk numbers at all was very difficult, because quantitative information about radiation risks has been systematically unreported for some reason.
[1] https://kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/mzj-hydro-explainer/
[2] https://twitter.com/DPiepgrass/status/1569508398202515458
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