Overnight, it seems, nuclear power has gone bad.
Or, rather, it has proven itself as risky as we feared it to be in our fluttering little hearts. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome. We've just been waiting for the bomb to go off.
The world has been shaken by the crisis in Japan. Switzerland, Lithuania and Germany have all halted nuclear plans. Canadian natural gas prices have flown up as confidence in nuclear power has plunged.
If Japan -smart and efficient, conscientious to the point of being anal, the designated driver of the industrialized world -can't be counted on for nuclear safety, where does that leave us hold-my-beer-andwatch-this Canadians? The sight of cooling towers leaves us chilled.
OK then, asks UVic climatologist Andrew Weaver, where does the world expect to get its power, and at what cost? Hydro dams, coal-fired plants, the Alberta oilsands all take a toll on the environment.
"We can't get energy without a footprint."
Those looking to mitigate the effects of climate change have long looked to nuclear power, though it's not suitable everywhere.
"The thing about Japan is they might have great technology, but they're built on a fault line," Weaver says. Same goes for Victoria. You wouldn't build a nuclear plant here.
Fortunately for B.C., Weaver says, we have alternatives, have hydro electricity, haven't even tapped the potential for tidal power, solar, waste-toenergy, small run-of-river projects and other sources.
Not everyone has our options, though. The world's hunger for energy isn't abating. Tuesday's Times Colonist talked about a potential $750 billion worth of natural gas locked in the shale deposits of northeast B.C. -and also of the potential environmental damage done in getting at it. As peak oil approaches, we go to more and more extremes to suck fossil fuels from the Earth, squeezing oil out of the Alberta tar, drilling deeper and deeper in the seabed (the BP Gulf of Mexico blow-out seems so long ago), even cheering when the retreat of the Arctic ice makes extraction easier.
"It's desperate stuff when we do this," Weaver says.
Asia's appetite is insatiable. If all goes to plan, Victorians will soon see a steady stream of ships flowing past our front door, carrying coal to the Orient from the proposed Gateway Pacific terminal at Cherry Point, Wash. It could be twice as busy as B.C.'s Roberts Bank terminal.
China's energy needs are also behind the controversial Enbridge pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast. (By the way, Enbridge was punked by a hoax Tuesday, somebody putting out a fake press release claiming the company was going to turn hair-salon clippings into super-absorbent oil spill clean-up booms. I'm not making this up.) What's worse, a spill or a meltdown?
We feel safe here because Canada's seven nuclear plants are all back east, in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. But wait: less than 400 kilometres from Victoria is Washington state's lone nuclear power facility, sitting on the old Hanford nuclear production complex. Plutonium made at Hanford was used in the A-bomb detonated over Nagasaki in 1945. Back in the Cold War, Hanford put the punch in America's nuclear arsenal. It is the most contaminated nuclear site in the U.S.
And now the Friends of the Earth warn that the public utility Energy Northwest hopes to try using surplus weapons-grade plutonium as fuel at its Hanford nuclear reactor, something the environmental watchdog says is risky. Eek! Run now!
Except we can't always run, Weaver says, can't always base our decisions in fear. (Can't throw out the baby with the cooling tower water?)
At some point we have to say not just what we oppose, but what we favour. "Some calm, rational decision-making is required."
We need energy. Where are we going to get it?
