2006 March 24
To the Editor,
The Guelph Mercury:
In her March 18th editorial Andrea Davis demonstrates healthy scepticism of
pro-nuclear television ads. Considerably less healthy is her blind faith in
the declarations of a professional anti-nuclear group (Energy Probe). What’
s missing is a suggestion of what to use instead of nuclear power, and one
wonders if Davis supports the same anti-nuclear group’s proposal for more
fossil burning.
Viewed objectively, nuclear power is the cleanest and most efficient option
for large-scale baseload power available to Ontarians. Every step of its
fuel cycle is closely regulated, from mining to waste management, such that
environmental impact is minimized. This includes the tail end of the fuel
cycle: contrary to Davis’ allegations, the solution for long-term waste
management exists and the rest is implementation, for which there is no
rush.
One reason for the lack of panic is the low volume: The City of Toronto
trucks out more garbage in a day than all of Canada’s reactors will produce
in their lifetime.
Another reason is that it is not really waste: Future generations have the
option to recycle our spent fuel and extract over a hundred times more
energy from it.
This essentially limitless energy source did not come to us for free, but it
should be comforting to Canadian taxpayers to know that the public
investment is made back many times over in the contribution of nuclear power
to the Canadian economy: by a factor of almost thirty over the last
half-century, according to a 2003 study by the Canadian Energy Research
Institute.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Whitlock
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