Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System

BRIAN WELTER: SASKATCHEWAN NDP (’NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT PARTY’) TOO NUCLEAR-FRIENDLY?

Book review: Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System, by Jim Harding, B. C. Catholic, April 20, 2009

April 24, 2009 ·

Brian Welter

BOOK REVIEW

Jim Harding offers nothing less than a blockbuster with this densely-packed book that will make readers rage at the cynicism of politics. The “Nuclear Development Party,” Saskatchewan’s NDP, comes off as particularly nasty.

Harding paints the province’s sometimes-fabled left-wing party that brought Medicare to Canada as an organization that time and again turned its back on good environmental sense and ignored the clear and constant wish of its grassroots. Once re-elected in 1992, it abruptly rejected the anti-nuclear position it had adopted while in opposition to the Grant Devine Tory government.

The NDP’s close dance with nuclear goes back to the venerable Tommy Douglas himself. The author, who idolized Douglas, was shocked when as a young political neophyte he discovered that the Great Leader had such links.

One often thinks that faraway sparsely-populated flatlands like Saskatchewan have somehow retained their purity.

All the nasty, dirty players move away to big, corrupt cities like Calgary or Toronto.

Harding places innocent Saskatchewan right in the eye of the hurricane when it comes to geo-politics. In fact, the province played a vital role in the 20th century’s love affair with nuclear bombs and nuclear power.

Harding cuts to the chase quickly, repeatedly, and from countless angles.

First, people can’t claim with clear consciences that Saskatchewan uranium is only used for peaceful purposes. It is impossible to know for certain whether the province’s uranium ends up in nukes. Second, even if it doesn’t end up in nukes, when it is used in America or France’s nuclear energy system Saskatchewan’s uranium frees a corresponding amount of uranium in those countries which they can then put into their weapons programs.

Second, Harding rejects the belief that uranium is a clean fuel. This is wrong for two reasons.

The extraction of uranium from the ground takes an exorbitant amount of fossil fuel, and the nuclear reactors themselves can use up a lot of fossil fuel. Harding points out that the American processing plant for uranium uses out-of-date coal power.

DISPOSAL METHODS RIDICULOUS

The belief is also wrong because the storage issues regarding the highly radioactive spent fuel are simply too mind-boggling to believe. No wonder most of us turn to the sports section when we happen upon an article telling the truth.

“One is really talking about storage in perpetuity in an environment that is ecologically and geologically dynamic and unpredictable, for time periods beyond human comprehension.

To put this in perspective, the management of plutonium for the required 800 generations is five times the time span that is has taken humans to expand out of North Africa and ‘colonize’ the whole planet.”

Third, the nuclear industry, Harding claims, underestimates the effects of radiation.

The legally acceptable amount of rems has been consistently lowered, from 35 to 5 in 1958, with researchers now claiming that 1 rem should be the limit of exposure.

Harding makes it clear that the uranium industry it tightly integrated, from the mining to the energy and bomb-making and finally to the ridiculous disposal methods.

Governments of all levels have also tied themselves closely to this industry, no matter what the general public wants.

http://gregoryhartnell.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/brian-welter-saskatchewan-ndp-nuclear-development-party-too-nuclear-friendly-book-review-canadas-deadly-secret-saskatchewan-uranium-and-global-nuclear-system-by-jim-harding-b-c-