Green Party of Saskatchewan

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Inter-Generational Justice

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) boasts the actual cost of electricity generated in their nuclear power plants is built into the price of their energy for 50 to 100 years. (After that it becomes sketchy.) That would necessarily include the entire phase of the transportation, storage, clean up, and disposal of high level radioactive waste for millions of years. Are they really suggesting that all future generations will be paid for their work cleaning up and storing the nuclear waste generated by current generations? Some simple mental math tells me that is hundreds of thousands of generations. That would require huge cash reserves. It is difficult for financial experts to plan one person's retirement let alone storage of radioactive waste for millions of years. I am very skeptical about such claims. I doubt whether OPG can accurately calculate the actual costs of millions of years of storage, transportation, and clean up of high level radioactive waste.

That is where the phrase: "Inter-Generational Justice" comes up. I first heard the phrase on the February, 2011 anti-nuclear speaking tour of Dr Jim Harding. The phrase questions whether it is fair to future generations to leave them with our high level radioactive waste. In fact high level radioactive waste is already a problem. Radioactive waste is like a hot potato that nobody wants to hold on to.


Furthermore, it seems like a stretch to tout nuclear energy as the "safe, clean, economical alternative" to petroleum products. Jim says: "Let's not get dumped from the frying pan of global warming into the fire of nuclear waste."


Please buy (and read) a copy of Jim's book:

Canada's Deadly Secret - Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System


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