Snubbing nuclear energy not Progressive of our Tories
Fifteen years ago several of the movers and shakers at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. unfolded a visionary scenario before me.
Simply put, it was that Calgary—or perhaps Edmonton—should become the world centre for research and development into nuclear power and also the centre for construction of the Candu-3 reactors and their progeny for export worldwide.
I’d been close to Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL)—and a great admirer of its expertise, even writing for its magazine—for several years and followed its proposals to have such scientific and manufacturing centres located in Saskatchewan.
Though Saskatchewan had huge uranium resources, and was job-hungry, Premier Grant Devine was cowed by the Lib-Left in his province and foolishly backed away.
No wonder Saskatchewan, with more natural resources than Alberta, still has roughly the same population it had in 1944.
No imagination, which you expect from socialist New Democrat regimes, but hardly from a Conservative one.
Anyway, my friends at AECL then put it to me such an endeavour should take place in the energy province of our country.
Ponder this: Top scientists from around the globe would locate here, so would individuals with skills in many other disciplines, and when the famed Candu-3s started to be constructed here, thousands of new well-paying jobs would be created.
When I put this scenario before our Editor-in-Chief, Chris Nelson, he immediately told me to get to work on background information and then one Sunday we splashed it all across Page One and several pages inside.
Columns outlining the benefits followed.
Then the Sun editorial board had a meeting with then-Premier Don Getty.
Getty, whose reputation was that of a disaster-prone politician—he even lost his own seat in Edmonton-Whitemud—just looked bemused.
“Aw, we have plenty of fossil fuels here,” he said.
With that, the scenario went to fast-fade, although his one-time energy minister, Rick Orman, actually saw the potential far more clearly.
Soon after that, Getty resigned and no one can quite recall what he achieved as premier—if anything.
Although I’d kept up on nuclear power developments—the cleanest, safest energy form in the world, particularly in this age of energy shortages and concerns about global warming—over the years I’d forgotten about AECL’s ideas for Alberta until a month ago when Energy Alberta Corporation proposed building a nuclear power plant to take over the role of natural gas in oilsands processing.
It takes a staggering amount of natural gas to run the oilsands plants and with soaring prices the cost is going up.
Also, why waste natural gas when you have such an alternative as nuclear power.
Yet, guess what?
Our current energy minister, Guy Boutilier, immediately nixed the concept saying nuclear power is “at the back of the wagon” when it comes to energy developments.
His spokesman added to this shortsighted comment by saying the minister contended nuclear power is at the “bottom of the barrel” as far as he is concerned.
Well, at least we now know the level of vision—and may I say competence—in Boutilier’s cranium mass.
Guy, you should ponder Getty’s place in our province’s history.
Nuclear power is on the rise again with some 27 reactors being construction around the world at this very moment.
Europe alone has 200 operating nuclear reactors.
Some 240 are operating in other nations , including 22 in Canada.
Except for Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union—a shoddily-built project at which a bunch of drunken operators decided to try and take the power ash high as it would go and blew off the top sky high—there has never been an accident in a nuclear plant caused by radiation leakage.
An incredible record, by any measure.
A new dawn is opening for nuclear power—and Alberta could have been in the driver’s seat.
But ‘our’ Progressive Conservative government was then, and is now, apparently too dim-witted to see it.
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