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Preamble
Nuclear power is one of the lowest-carbon sources of electricity, as recognized by IPCC and United Nations ECE. A majority of Canadians support using nuclear energy to generate electricity.
Proposal text
Green Party of Canada WILL CEASE BLANKET-OPPOSITION TO NUCLEAR POWER AS A SOURCE OF LOW-CARBON ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION.
Type of Proposal
Public policy that the party would represent.
Objective / Benefit
This resolution is intended to withdraw existing GPC policies which oppose Canada's use of nuclear technologies for non-military purposes. GPC policies which impede nuclear by calling for "renewable" energy shall be updated to replace "renewable" with "clean".
If your proposal replaces an existing policy or policies, which one does it replace?
1996 Foreign Aid - repeal
G06-p11 Enhanced Nuclear Policy - repeal
1998 - Peace and Security - repeal
G08-p012 Nuclear Power - repeal
G10-p31 Carbon Free National Feed-in Tariff - Amend: remove "non-nuclear,"
G08-136 Energy Transition Plan - Amend: change "renewable energy" to "clean energy"
G08-p137 Support of Distributed Electrical Power Grid Research - Amend: change "renewable energy" to "clean energy"
List any supporting evidence for your proposal
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe issued a report comparing not just lifecycle carbon emissions for various electricity sources, but overall impact on the environment and human health. Nuclear power was the single lowest CO2eq /kWh electricity source studied. The single lowest impact on ecosystems. And among the very lowest impact on human health. (CO2: Page 8. Ecosystems: Page 57. Human health: Page 58.) https://unece.org/sed/documents/2021/10/reports/life-cycle-assessment-electricity-generation-options
Our World In Data summarizes a modern assessment of various electricity system's safety and cleanliness. While not as in-depth or recent as UN ECE's study, Our World In Data clearly positioned nuclear in 2020 as one of humanity's safest and cleanest energy sources. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
Despite his continued opposition to nuclear power, Dr. Gordon Edwards acknowledges "Low-carbon emitting technologies include solar, wind, hydro and nuclear" in a 2021 briefing paper. https://www.ourcommons.ca/content/Committee/441/ENVI/WebDoc/WD11891319/11891319/RamanaMV-1-e.pdf
In GPC's "Roundtable on Canada's Nuclear Policy" Dr. Gordon Edward observes that splitting atoms for energy does not release carbon. (Excerpt with my commentary:) https://youtu.be/HKIcnbMMdO0?t=24 (Original video:) https://www.facebook.com/GreenPartyofCanada/videos/934857067289154/
The nuclear supply chain for CANDU refurbishments is 98% Canadian. https://www.opg.com/documents/2021-ontario-nuclear-collaboration-report/
This can be contrasted with other low (but not as low as nuclear) carbon energy sources where components are not domestically produced, such as wind turbines: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/79fdad93-9025-49ad-ba16-c26d718cc070
Nuclear's domestic, Canadian, supply chain still achieves a cost /kWh only beaten by hydropower. https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20211022.pdf
On April 23, 2023, Dr. Chris Keefer debated Dr. Gordon Edwards on the subject of nuclear power in Canada. This was the "Roundtable on Canada's Nuclear Policy" that GPC members might have experienced, if a single pro-nuclear voice had been allowed to participate. https://youtu.be/LvMC8TK025w
Angus Reid Institute finds increasing support from Canadians for nuclear power. In June 2021, 51% of Canadians said they would like to see further development of nuclear power generation. Now 57% say the same. https://angusreid.org/canada-energy-nuclear-power-oil-and-gas-wind-solar/
This 57% of Canadians supporting nuclear matches a similar trend in the United States, where also now 57% support nuclear power. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/18/growing-share-of-americans-favor-more-nuclear-power/
Germany serves as a cautionary tale that renewables have not replaced their nuclear fleet. This video details use on online grid monitoring tools to evaluate Elizabeth May's statement (made during COP28) that shutting down nuclear power has "freed up" the grid to accept renewable energy, while not also noting that German grid remains high-carbon, and Germany immediately transitioned (upon the closure of their last nuclear power plants) from being net-exporter of electricity to net-importer of electricity. https://youtu.be/8rcMwmGuGSo
Does this proposal affect any particular group and what efforts have been made to consult with the group or groups?
N/A
Jurisdiction: Is this proposal under federal jurisdiction?
Yes
Please indicate the language the proposal is being submitted in.
English
Amendments (3)
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Created at
05/07/2024 -
- 6
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Created at
27/02/2024 -
- 0
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Created at
05/07/2024 -
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Conversation with Derek Doda
Part 2 of 5
You’ve probably heard someone say something along the lines of “it’s waste that sits around radioactive for thousands of years”.
That is a correct statement, and also misleading. It paints a picture that spent fuel is this super dangerous substance that you can’t get near for thousands of years.
We need to pick apart what “radioactive for thousands of years” actually means.
Half life is how quickly an atom decays. When it decays it releases energy in the form of radiation and that atom turns into a different type of atom.
Let’s say you have 100 atoms. They have a half life of 1 day. After one day 50 of your atoms have released radiation and become a different type of atom. The next day 25 atoms, and then 12, 6, 3, so on and so forth.
The important takeaway from this is the shorter the half life an atom has, the more quickly it releases radiation. The ones with a short half life are the dangerous ones. The ones with a longer half life are slower to release radiation and thus safer.
My favourite video to illustrate this is workers preparing CANDU fuel bundles. Natural uranium has a very long half life and it’s safe to be around and handle.
https://youtu.be/c7ehyxRBMbw?t=266
You really need to understand half life in order to understand spent fuel storage. Spent fuel is the most dangerous right when it’s been removed from a reactor.
It has a lot of different radioactive atoms with VERY short half lives. They are going crazy, decaying and releasing radiation. But, because they have a short half life, they only stick around for a short amount of time. It loses 80-90% of its radiation in the first 10 years.
The curve of radioactivity after being in a reactor looks like this.
https://world-nuclear.org/getmedia/3b44d04c-31ad-47f8-8217-344f0d9c516b/Decay-in-radioactivity-of-fission-products.png.aspx
It spends its first 10 years in a cooling pond, and afterward goes into dry cask storage. It’s now safe enough that it just sits there releasing small amounts of heat. As far as I know, there hasn’t been a single fatality in regards to spent fuel in the entire nuclear industry.
The question now is, if we wanted to at what point could we put that spent fuel back in the ground? The general answer: When it’s the same radioactivity as when it came out of the ground. This is where we have an issue. The shorter half life atoms are gone and now we only have longer half lives. It’s a long wait to go from “somewhat safe” to “completely safe”. This is a negative and something the industry has to deal with. But it’s also not something to overreact to.
I recommend this video where they calculated how long it would take before you could cuddle a spent fuel bundle for a two hour movie. Spoiler, it’s 400 years. Or only 100 years if you want to remain ten feet away from it. I do recommend the whole video though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM-b5-uD6jU&t=895s
Derek - I am curious, this statement "As far as I know, there hasn’t been a single fatality in regards to spent fuel in the entire nuclear industry."..what does fatality mean in this context? Does it include those who contracted cancer or other aliments as a result of exposure to radiation, or does fatality mean dead either immediately or within days of exposure?
My understanding is that it includes doses in regards to exposure to spent fuel. So that would include cancer caused by that. You do get to a weird point when it comes to low levels of radiation and establishing where a cancer risk points to.
I was curious to look up cancer rates amongst people that are exposed to higher radiation doses like pilots. I wasn't able to find anything quickly regarding pilots. I ended up finding this for nuclear workers in Canada.
https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/pubs_catalogue/uploads/INFO0811_e.pdf
Summarizing, after 1965 there is no cancer risk for nuclear plant workers. So this would include operating the reactor, fueling the reactor, and dealing with spent fuel.
Pre 1965 there seems to be a group of 3,088 workers that had a higher cancer risk (not rate). It also goes on to say that there was a lack of dose information. We don't know if it was from experiments in operating the test reactors at the time, or if it was spent fuel. This group while having a higher cancer risk had a lower mortality compared to the population:
"Despite this apparent increase in cancer risk, a comparison using the Canadian Mortality Database showed statistically significant lower rates of all causes of death and cancer mortality for this group than for the general Canadian population"
Part 3 of 5
What do we do with the spent fuel then?
There are a couple of options. In France they recycle their fuel. They remove the elements they don’t want, which go into storage. Then the rest can go back into a reactor.
We can put spent fuel in a deep geological repository. That I feel like is a waste of time.
My personal favourite is to put the spent fuel into a fast reactor. This is getting into nuclear physics. The quick and fast of it is that in a normal reactor you slow down the neutrons. In our CANDU reactors we use deuterium to really slow neutrons down. That’s how we can use natural uranium. A fast reactor as you might have guessed has really fast moving neutrons. In our spent fuel there are atoms heavier than uranium. The one that scares people the most is plutonium. In a fast reactor those atoms get split and then no longer exist. After being in a fast reactor your spent fuel only needs to be stored for 300 years. The long half life atoms have now been split. You’ve also used the fuel twice to generate electricity. Lastly, we can build a box that lasts 300 years, we have the box technology.
We are currently working on such a reactor in New Brunswick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQCm-kmUWA8
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