Collaborative Proposal Creation
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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 -
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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 Sarah Gabrielle Baron
There are several long-standing Green member-made policies that would have to be rescinded, should this motion be approved by members, including our first, original member-made policy, from 1988. One could say, "let's cut out the heart of the Party". This is what it means to be Green. I hope we never forget, never rescind, and continue to stay true to our Ecologically Wise and Nonviolent roots:
"1988 - Peace and Security.....・ The Canadian Greens would support a nuclear-free policy for Canada which includes: ・the cessation of exploration for mining of radioactive materials; ・ the shut-down of the nuclear industry including nuclear power plants; the cessation of trade in nuclear technology inside and outside Canada with the exception, (at this time), of that related to medical purposes; ・ the banning of nuclear weapons and related technology from Canada; ・ the declaration of Canada as a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone.... "
We would also have to rescind our support from UNDRIP, since the nuclear industry (with approval from Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) is storing radioactive waste on Indigenous territories without their Free, Prior and Informed consent - Cameco's Port Hope waste is going to be permanently interred just 1.5 km from the Mississaugi First Nation (they've lodged a formal complaint with the government, likely to be totally ignored), and the First Nations of the Algonquin Anishinabek have decried the Near Surface Disposal Facility at Chalk River Labs. Not to mention the legacy of uranium tailings lakes dotting the landscape in Saskatchewan and northern Ontario. Finally, just to be clear, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission should be replaced - but not because they're too hard on the industry, rather because they are corporate-captured rubber stamp for for-profit industry whose control of Canada's nuclear planning and materials has only increased since Harper broke up AECL in 2015. I have been in meetings with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission where they tell Indigenous peoples that the high rates of cancer in their communities is 'normal' and I've seen commissioners argue against their right to Free Prior and Informed consent. I've yet to see any commitment to long term community health studies on the effects of bioaccumulation of radionuclides. No, the 'background' radiation exposure from the sun or a banana is NOT comparable to the exposure of a radionuclide lodged, permanently, in your bone or thyroid or breast. Health Canada should have jurisdiction over the CNSC. We need an audit on the CNSC. We need an audit on the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, a for-profit group with jurisdiction over High Level Waste. We need to say no to nuclear, particularly this push for 'modular' models, experiments every one of them, that will only reach profitability if they are mass-produced and sold to developing countries. This is a weapons-proliferation risk, as all of these models would require high grade fuels.
Nuclear power for civilian use in Canada is simply indispensable even for the energy needs of citizens with a below average energy demand. I acknowledge it's availability or expansion might become justification for an ever higher energy consumption. But it is necessary for all citizens to realize the extent of our energy use and to negotiate the ecological costs of any energy source. Should the Green Party insist on an anti nuclear stand, I would have to leave the party. Except for passive solar , I do not know of any ecologically neutral sources. I used to be adamantly against nuclear power, but have a much more complex picture of the industry, their safety record, the statistics of accidents and radiation effects. I would like to know more about the links between nuclear weapons and whether nuclear power stations are contributing to their development and proliferation. This is a worrysome aspect. I definitely know Canada could have done more to negotiate for the abolition of nuclear weapons .
I also agree with Sarah Barron , that the ill effects of uranium mining ( and any mining) in remote areas must be addressed. Nuclear waste should be dealt with in the South where most of the benefits are derived and higher population density includes expertise in handling nuclear fuel.
I am rereading Sarah Barrons comment directed to me and I am committed to investigating background and agencies like the CNSC, but I stand by my statement that there is no green energy. Restraint in energy and material use is the only option we have .It is not an attractive proposition for any political movement . It is also not possible without some kind of meachanism and conscience to install a cap on how much power/ money one person/ corporation can command. I am not with the NDP because they look at "more for the little guy".. We need much much less for the big guys.
Sibylle, thanks for your comment. For your info, a discussion of the relationship between nuclear power and nuclear weapons can be found in Tomas Pueyo's, reference previously posted: https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/why-nuclear-is-amazing-1ab604bb448a about halfway through.
Hi Sibylle. I think most Canadians approach the nuclear power question in a way similar to yourself. If it's ok, I'll address your suggestions from my perspective, and as the Nuclear Critic on our Party's Shadow Cabinet.
You wrote that "Nuclear power for civilian use in Canada is simply indispensable even for the energy needs of citizens with a below average energy demand." This is, thank goodness, not true. There are plenty of University level professors out there with high level studies proving that with a combination of renewables, storage, and revolutionizing our grid systems to be smart and distributed, we can easily and fully get to Net Zero in our energy grid systems. I'd start with Mark Z. Jacobson out of Stanford, but there are many other.
Of course, there seems to be a mini-war of "my facts are facts, your facts are garbage" going on in these two pro-nuke threads. In the end, we must be true to Ecological Wisdom, our first Key Value, which you also acknowledge when you wrote, "it is necessary for all citizens to realize the extent of our energy use and to negotiate the ecological costs of any energy source."
You also wrote, "Should the Green Party insist on an anti nuclear stand, I would have to leave the party". That is unfortunate! Did you know that the Green Party of Canada has had an anti-nuclear power policy since 1988? Did you know that Elizabeth calls out corruption and danger in the nuclear industry regularly? Perhaps you didn't know this when you signed up? You will find a pro-nuclear home in any of the other Parties, except in Quebec. Only the Greens offer a counter narrative and voice of caution.
Sibylle, you write, "I used to be adamantly against nuclear power, but have a much more complex picture of the industry, their safety record, the statistics of accidents and radiation effects". I agree that there is a fairly good safety record in Canada. However, once one scratches the surface using sources other than the CNSC and industry, the picture quickly becomes less rosy. This sourcing of information - particularly on the health effects of exposure to radionuclides - is my life's passion these past 5 years now. It's why I started my YouTube channel, and my podcast, RADIOACTIVE, and why I'm very grateful for the work Elizabeth does on this subject, particularly with helping Indigenous voices get parliamentary access for press conferences decrying the industry and CNSC approval processes.
You wrote, "I would like to know more about the links between nuclear weapons and whether nuclear power stations are contributing to their development and proliferation. This is a worrysome aspect." Canada has never stopped producing plutonium. Our CANDUs are the world's most vulnerable potential source. And due to experiments in reprocessing at Chalk River, controlled by SNC-Lavalin/ Atkins Réalis and their weapons-producing partners, we are ground zero for a potential black market in plutonium trading.
"I'd start with Mark Z. Jacobson out of Stanford, but there are many other."
Sarah, when you cite MZJ as your first example of proof that nuclear is not needed, you're citing a professor who's used SLAPP to (try) to silence his critics. The one episode of one podcast I've been repeatedly encouraging GPC members to listen to is "DECOUPLE - Energy Modelling: the Good, the Bad, and the Misleading"
Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0__qpTuLaGg (audio versions can also be found, is very convenient content to consume)
...they discuss MZJ's SLAPP against Christopher Clack, because Clack had the audacity to point out MZJ was exaggerating hydro's dispatchability.
This was a 2015 paper published by MZJ. Clack's critique was published in 2017, and MZJ responded almost immediately with the SLAPP.
It wasn't until THIS YEAR, 2024, that the legal battle had completely ended, with MZJ (well, Stanford) being forced to pay Clack's legal fees.
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/02/15/stanford-prof-who-sued-critics-loses-appeal-against-500000-in-legal-fees/
Sarah, can you confirm you DID or did NOT listen to that single episode of DECOUPLE I asked you to?
Because I listened to your podcast. You platform people spreading disinformation... for example, in the very first episode I listened to, Dr. Helen Caldicott says a large number of people in Fukushima developed thyroid cancer.
I feature that statement in a video I made about Dr. Helen Caldicott. I feature YOUR PODCAST. Because YOU personally directed me to listen to it. And I listened to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di8AnUsDmew
Before you cite MZJ again, could you please do us the courtesy of listening to either the DECOUPLE episode on energy modelling, or read the RETRACTION WATCH coverage concerning MZJ?
Because you keep citing people, and platforming people, who have made inaccurate statements about nuclear power.
MZJ, for example, claimed in a TED Talk debate (with Stewart Brand) over nuclear power, that nuclear power has up to 70g CO2 /kWh.
Today we know, according to United Nations ECE Lifecycle report that nuclear is around 5.5g, not 70g.
Sarah, have you read the UN ECE Report?
Radionuclides from the Fukushima accident in the air over Lithuania: Measurement and modelling approaches
December 2011Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 114:71-80
December 2011114:71-80
DOI:10.1016/j.jenvrad.2011.12.004
SourcePubMed
Paul, thanks for your comment. It is very sad to see the level of abuse that facts receive in this discussion. Whether a fact is a fact or not should not be open to question. However we are often dealing with statistics, not facts, and as we all know, there are lies, damned lies and then statistics.
Paul, I take exception to your statements about Plutonium. Yes, plutonium is nasty. Yes, it was spread around the world by Nagasaki and by Chernobyl. But not by Fukushima. Pu in Japan was locally distributed within about 200 km of Fukushima, not desirable at all, but that was the limit. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32916482/) And moreover barely distinguishable in Japan from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fallouts. The latter were nuclear explosions, involving Pu, but Fukushima was a high pressure steam explosion which included radioactive materials: it was not a nuclear explosion.
Further, if by one plutonium, you mean one atom, then the likelihood of it causing a problem is unlikely in the extreme within more than one person's life time. The half-life of Pu isotopes varies from 14 years to 80 million years. We'd need to know which isotope was involved but even then, one atom alone cannot be accused of causing a problem.
If you mean a glass granule of the type found at Fukushima, then we are talking about maybe a few micrograms of Pu embedded in a glass bead perhaps a gram in size. You can calculate the rate of decays such a sample would produce, and thus again the danger to any one person's health if consumed. I leave that to you as an exercise in trying to understand what radiation really is.
I completely agree with you Sarah G. Baron, thank you. One comment though on your reference to the "mini-war" that "my facts are facts and your facts are garbage." The frustration in this whole process is that the pro-nuke arguments are garbage. We shouldn't have to waste our time re arguing this nonsense on an endless basis.
For example, David Robinson tried to claim that it is some form of obvious economics that the public should assume all the liability risk of nuclear (which is so high the private sector won't take the risk) because the public benefits from it. I graduated from UBC with an Honours degree in Economics and can say this is utter garbage. If this was so then the public should be responsible for the clean up of all oil spills because the public benefited from the oil. Could you image oil companies saying the public must pay the full cost of the Exxon Valdes oil spill because we benefited from the oil. This view of economics is the most pro-corporate, right wing view of the world I've seen here and has no place in the Green Party.
The proponent himself made the utterly ridiculous statement that nuclear is the greenest, safest energy source out there. if you had gone on a tour of the Fukushima nuclear plant the day before the meltdown with the plant's top engineers, I have no doubt they would have said there is no realistic chance of a meltdown, it is perfectly safe. That is all I hear from the pro-nuke shrills even when there's another meltdown. In short they are speaking nonsense and you can't rebut it because there is not enough information known by either side so we are all taking the risk that it will work.
As for health, the pro-nukers always rely on the misstatement that there are very few deaths from radiation leaks or meltdowns. The problem with cancer caused by radiation exposure is cancer doesn't carry a marker that tells doctors it was caused by radiation or tobacco smoke. The tobacco industry took advantage of this fact for years. They can still say that there is not a single provable case of a death by smoking, it is only inferred by the fact that a person smoked and later got cancer and epidemiological studies now show there is likely a link. The same holds true for cancer from radiation. After Fukushima it was confirmed that Plutonium particles were found from that meltdown in Europe. The fallout went right around the world. Vancouver gets its water from open reservoirs and if one Plutonium ends up in someone's glass of water (call it the nuclear lottery) they will absorb it and it will releasing radiation at a very small undetectable scale for years and could cause cancer that will never be attributed to the meltdown. Nuclear releases happen at a localized scale as well and will increase cancer rates downwind but will never be provable at the level of the individual, so the pro-nukes trolls can spew so-called "facts" that nuclear causes minimal deaths when it is not so.
Sarah, yes, in my own proposal I have listed off all the overtly anti-nuclear policies which would need to be rescinded or modified. Sorry that (for example) banning uranium mining worldwide might be an important policy goal for you. Currently it is Canadian mined uranium which (used domestically and exported) offsets a full third of all of Canada's emissions, across all sectors.
I joined GPC because I wish to fight Global Warming, and since joining I've come to see how some GPC policies impede the fight.
I can post comments here, but really very few GPC members are reading them. The only real megaphone is used by Elizabeth May on this subject, and she has yet to acknowledge to our members that nuclear is even low carbon. (United Nations ECE Lifecycle report shows nuclear being THE SINGLE LOWEST-CARBON source of energy.)
My GPC involvement stems from GPC positioning itself as the party which would fight against Global Warming. That is why I joined. It is why GPC received my VERY overt support and volunteering for years. If you want GPC's primary appeal to always be to members who will forever have a non-changing sense of what GPC should be, and should always be... well has GPC ever done better than the election after which "An Inconvenient Truth" was released in 2006?
https://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/1867-present.html
6.8% was the high-water mark for GPC receiving Canadian votes, back in 2008.
While Global Warming isn't GPC's only issue, it still strikes me as GPC's signature issue. GPC can't keep Climate Hawks in the party, if GPC opposes the SINGLE LOWEST-CARBON TECH available today.
GPC can continue to fight against any particular waste storage site. Any particular reactor being built on a particular site. Lay out guidelines for what is acceptable or not.
But it is right there in the policy you quote: "The Canadian Greens would support a nuclear-free policy for Canada".
The blanket-ban makes all the details you list moot.
"We would also have to rescind our support from UNDRIP"
NO. That is a reason to oppose specific projects. Not a reason to entirely ban a technology. You can give that as a reason while opposing a project, and oppose a project. GPC can still oppose things.
And opposition will carry more weight when the rational everyone understands does not include a blanket-ban which exists because you believe it is "the heart of the Party".
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