By David Suzuki with contributions from Senior Editor and Writer Ian Hanington
As the consequences of burning dirty, climate-altering fossil fuels hit harder by the day, many are seizing on nuclear power as a “clean” energy alternative. But how clean is it?
Although it may not produce the emissions that burning fossil fuels does, nuclear power presents many other problems. Mining, processing and transporting uranium to fuel reactors creates toxic pollution and destroys ecosystems, and reactors increase risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and radioactive contamination. Disposing of the highly radioactive waste is also challenging.
The people living in Ignace and South Bruce, Ontario, are learning about the potential dangers firsthand. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, a not-for-profit corporation representing nuclear power companies, has identified those communities as potential sites for disposing of six million bundles of highly radioactive waste in a “deep geological repository.” The federal government has agreed to the organization’s plans.
It’s an all-too-common story: environmentally damaging projects foisted on communities that need the money such projects promise.
In this case, the NWMO has already paid Indigenous and municipal governments large sums to accept its plans — ignoring communities that will also be affected along transportation routes or downstream of burial sites.