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 -
- 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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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.
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