The Dominion - nuclear

Stopping Nuclear Waste in its Tracks

Sandra — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 10:10:27 +0000

Communities, Indigenous organizations pass resolutions against transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan

BEAUVAL, SK—Three places in northern Saskatchewan may be on the map in Canada's search for a high-level radioactive waste dump site, but the spent nuclear fuel bundles may be stopped in their tracks. Communities and Indigenous organizations along potential transport routes and beyond have been passing resolutions against nuclear waste.

The Northern Village of Pinehouse, English River First Nation and the town of Creighton are all currently in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) site selection process to find a "willing host community" for a deep geological repository to house the waste piling up at nuclear reactors in Quebec, New Brunswick and especially Ontario.

Canoe Lake First Nation, the town of La Loche, trappers from the Fur Block near Beauval, the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Women's Circle Corporation (SAWCC) and the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC) have all formally opposed the transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan. Others criticize NWMO for refusing to deal with site selection process on a regional basis, even though a decision would affect much more than a single community.

Emil Bell has been educating Band and town councilors about the Nuclear Waste Management Organization process and the dangers of nuclear waste. A Cree grassroots activist, he lives in Fire Lake, outside of the Canoe Lake First Nation reserve.

"Canoe Lake is against this whole thing," Bell told the Media Co-op. Located in northwestern Saskatchewan, east of the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range and tar sands exploitation, the First Nation passed a Band Council Resolution against the transportation and storage of nuclear waste.

"I was the one that was going around, getting all the signatures of the councilors," said Bell. "They are dead set against the nuclear dump. It goes against our Treaty rights, our inherent rights. If we get a major disaster wherever they put the nuclear dump, our waterways are, you know, shot. Animal life, the plant life, are going to be drastically affected."

Bell has been traveling up and down the province, meeting with other First Nations, municipal authorities and groups and urging them to take an official stance against the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. "There's a few of us that are going around, doing a lot of work, and we do it out of our own pocket," he said.

But northern activists are not the only ones speaking about nuclear waste in the region. "The nuclear industry people, NWMO, have a lot of money. They're also going around, trying to convince people to, you know, accept the nuclear dump [with] the promise of a lot of money, the promise of jobs...they keep telling people 'oh yeah, it's safe, it's safe,'" Bell told the Media Co-op.

The predominantly Métis community of Île-à-la-Crosse has yet to take an official position on nuclear waste transportation and storage and will likely revisit the issue after the October 24 municipal elections. Île-à-la-Crosse Mayor Duane Favel says he and others requested that NWMO communicate and deal with municipalities in northwestern Saskatchewan collectively because a nuclear waste repository in the area would impact the entire region.

"Our proposal was, as Northwest municipalities, that we try and get NWMO to deal with us as a region, as the Northwest municipalities. We drafted up a letter [and] we tried to get the signature of every mayor—I believe there's 17 municipalities on the northwest side—[so] that NWMO would have to deal with us collectively, if they were, you know, to talk about nuclear waste within their region," Favel told the Media Co-op in an interview in the Île-à-la-Crosse village office.

"However, that got kind of sidetracked," he said. "They started meeting with municipalities individually and convinced, you know, one or two municipalities to agree to—for NWMO to go into their communities and start this process that they talk about."

Many mayors did sign the letter and a copy was given to the Northwest municipalities and to NWMO. But NWMO declined to pursue the regional approach requested by the municipalities.

"They didn't want to deal with that as a collective organization. They wanted to deal with specific municipalities. And I believe some of the reasoning was, you know, the areas that they were looking for, that would be good for this deposit of nuclear waste, wasn't throughout this region," said Favel. "However, that was not our argument. Our argument was if nuclear waste was to be stored in the northwest side of Saskatchewan, that they should be dealing with us collectively and we should vote as a region whether or not we want nuclear waste stored within this area."

The communication between Île-à-la-Crosse and NWMO is currently non-existent, Favel told the Media Co-op.

"I'm still kind of baffled in terms of why they didn't use that approach and actually consult with everybody within the region and try to, I guess at least in the beginning, have a good working relationship in terms of addressing the issue with the people of Northwest Saskatchewan," he said. "I thought it was a completely disrespectful approach."

While Île-à-la-Crosse and other municipalities consider whether to take an official position on the issue, some locals of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan have been actively organizing opposition to the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. Bryan Lee and other members of the Fish Lake Métis local began looking into the nuclear waste storage issue a few years ago, when they heard locations in northern Saskatchewan were under consideration.

"Once we heard this, then we started looking into the whole issue ourselves because we had heard some things in [the] press, that the NWMO was looking for a 'willing host community' in northern Saskatchewan," Lee told the Media Co-op. "We brought forward a motion within our local to take a position...to oppose the storage and transportation of high-level nuclear waste."

After passing at the Fish Lake Métis local, the resolution was taken to Western Region 2, where it passed as well. A motion for the resolution to be adopted at the provincial level by the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan did not succeed in 2010, but Lee presented it again in 2011.

"I reformatted the resolution and I brought it forward to the annual general assembly November 5, 2011. And in the presentation, we were successful in getting a two thirds majority approval at the assembly, for the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan to take the official position to oppose the storage and transportation of high-level nuclear waste anywhere in Saskatchewan," said Lee.

The Saskatchewan Aboriginal Women's Circle Corporation of Saskatchewan also passed a resolution last year, opposing the transportation and storage of nuclear waste in Saskatchewan. The resolution was then adopted by the Native Women's Association of Canada at its annual general assembly held in Saskatoon in August 2012.

The town of La Loche and the trappers' organization from a Fur Block in the Beauval area have also passed similar resolutions. More communities and organizations are currently considering taking an official stance against nuclear waste in the province.

NWMO is moving forward in its search and Pinehouse, English River First Nation and Creighton are still under consideration. But with all the resolutions against nuclear waste transportation, whether the high-level radioactive waste would ever make it to a storage site in northern Saskatchewan without roadblocks along the way is beginning to look increasingly unlikely.

Sandra Cuffe is a freelance journalist and member of the Vancouver Media Co-op. She recently returned to the west coast after eight weeks in Saskatchewan. This article was originally published on the Media Co-op.

Saskatchewan Nuclear Dump

Defending the Land from Nuclear Waste

Sandra — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 09:23:31 +0000

Indigenous community elders, activists gather in northern Saskatchewan against nuclear waste site

SOUTH BAY, SK—The storm clouds had moved on by the time people arrived at South Bay on lake Ile-a-la-Crosse last Friday for a grassroots gathering against a potential nuclear waste site in northern Saskatchewan. Dene, Cree and Métis elders from affected communities, grassroots activists from around Saskatchewan and others from as far as the west coast and Germany shared coffee, songs, experiences and a whole lot of moose meat from August 3 to 6 at the Survival Celebration Camp for Sustainable Earth.

"We have to protect the land," Jules Daigneault told those gathered in a sharing circle around the campfire. When the 70-year-old elder heard about the gathering happening in South Bay, he travelled across the lake to the camp from his home in Ile-a-la-Crosse in a boat he made himself. "Everything comes from the land. All our food comes from the land."

Gunter Wippel traveled to the camp from Germany, where he has been actively involved in anti-nuclear activism for decades. Wippel has been visiting northern Saskatchewan since the late 1980s, involved with struggles against the expansion of the uranium mining industry. He was also in the province in the mid-90s for the Seaborn panel hearings on nuclear waste management in Canada.

"I can't believe that we still have to protest that same shit," Wippel remarked during the closing circle on Monday.

As is the case in most countries with nuclear power production, spent fuel bundles are stored onsite at reactors in Canada—in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. The federal Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is planning a deep geological repository to place all of Canada's nuclear waste underground in the rock. No permanent waste storage facility exists anywhere in the world, largely due to opposition from scientific, environmental, activist and other communities.

In the latest stage of the decades-long search for a long-term nuclear waste disposal site, NWMO has received expressions of interest to host the site. Although Saskatchewan is already host to the tailings and waste from the uranium mining industry producing the uranium to be refined and processed for nuclear energy elsewhere, the province was included in the search for a willing host community. Along with several places in Ontario, NWMO has three locations in northern Saskatchewan on the map: Pinehouse, the English River First Nation and Creighton.

But elders and community members from Pinehouse and the English River First Nation say that their communities are largely opposed to hosting nuclear waste in their territories. Despite the money that NWMO and Saskatchewan-based uranium mining giant CAMECO have recently been pouring into the local councils, community promoters and other programs, they say that they did not initially even know that their own councils—municipal in Pinehouse and Band in English River—were advocating for the multi-million-dollar proposals.

"The Chiefs there don't say nothing to us. They just talk about money, budgets," Dene elder Louis Wolverine told The Dominion. Wolverine, 84, was one of several elders who attended the camp from Patuanak, near the part of the English River First Nation seemingly identified for the waste site.

"They say that it's okay, that nothing's very dangerous," he said of CAMECO and NWMO. The people in Patuanak don't want nuclear waste, he said. "The elders too—they don't want it."

Elder Mary Jane Wolverine spoke to people attending the elder's circle in Dene, with translation into English by another elder from Patuanak. Several elders spoke of the impacts of uranium mining on fishing, hunting and gathering grounds. Some had traplines and seasonal camps where the Key Lake mine is now located. They are now speaking out to protect their traditional territory, the interconnected lakes and waterways, the animals and the medicinal plants from further destruction.

"We have our children, our future grandchildren growing up...Myself, I don't want it in our country," she said. "All the elders are saying the same thing, that we don't want anything to do with nuclear waste."

In Pinehouse, a town located along the road up to the Key Lake uranium mine, the mayor and municipal council have been meeting with NWMO behind closed doors, says Fred Pederson, an outspoken Cree elder from the community. NWMO has a group of paid promoters, an elder's group and access to young students, says Pederson.

But 60 per cent of eligible voters in Pinehouse signed a petition against nuclear waste disposal in northern Saskatchewan, without the petition even having reached the whole population. The Committee for Future Generations, a grassroots organization in the region, presented the petition with more than 12,000 signatures to the provincial legislature last year. Opposition continues to grow in Pinehouse and around the province.

"It's not the people that want it. It is just our leaders that are promoting it," Pederson told The Dominion. He and several others at the gathering also raised the issue of systemic racism by the provincial and federal governments in their search for a nuclear waste disposal site in northern Saskatchewan, in Indigenous and Metis traditional territories. "It's just like we don't count, like they can kill us off."

When the nightly conversation and music around the fire continued into the wee hours of Monday morning, those who stayed awake extending their time together on the last night of the gathering were rewarded. The northern lights made a surprise appearance in the night sky, with shimmering green lights dancing overhead as the last people wandered off to their tents, campers and the beach.

Elders from affected northern communities, the Committee for Future Generations, and others who attended the camp from further away reiterated their commitment to the struggle against nuclear waste in northern Saskatchewan. Revitalized by the camraderie, inspired by the elders, and energized by the young children playing along the beach, those involved with the gathering have plans well underway to continue the campaign over the next few months.

"If we band together, people produce power," said Pederson. "We can stop all of this. We can stop the destruction."

Sandra Cuffe is a Media Co-op editor based in Vancouver, and a member of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Survival Celebration

Canada’s Conservatives to Push for Iran Sanctions

dru — Sat, 29 May 2010 05:00:31 +0000

Israeli nukes not a concern

MONTREAL—In the lead-up to the G8 summit in Canada, Conservative politicians in Ottawa are pushing publicly for increased sanctions on Iran.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has indicated he will lobby for severe sanctions at the elite summit, to take place June 25-27, 2010.

“Canada will continue to use its G8 presidency to focus international attention and action on Iran,” a representative of the office of Minister Cannon told The Dominion. “We believe that further sanctions authorized by the United Nations Security Council are needed.”

China’s reluctance to back US attempts to introduce strict sanctions on Iran has set the stage for the upcoming G8 summit to serve as gathering where the US and Canada will unite in favour of a more hard-line position on Iran. China holds a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, but it is not a member country of the G8.

The Conservative government’s plan to utilize the upcoming G8 summit as a platform to apply pressure on Iran is central to its intervention strategy in contemporary Middle Eastern politics. Often left out of the global political drama surrounding the Iranian government’s relationship to nuclear power is the region’s only current nuclear power: the Israeli government in Tel Aviv.

At the recent US Nuclear Security Summit, President Barack Obama pushed for world leaders to scale back major nuclear development, and build an increasing global consensus in support of sanctions on Iran.

What sanctions...accomplish is, hopefully, to change the calculus of a country like Iran, so that they see that there are more costs and fewer benefits to pursuing a nuclear-weapons program,” Obama said at the summit.

Also absent from serious scrutiny at the summit was the massive US nuclear stockpile or any criticism of the Israeli nuclear program. “As far as Israel goes, I’m not going to comment on their program,” said Obama. The Canadian government has issued no criticism of the existing Israeli nuclear arsenal, even though they have pushed for Iran to end its nuclear program. The fact that Israel is left out of the discussion is not an accident, according to Shourideh Molavi, a Toronto-based Iranian writer.

“Canada is moving toward a second phase of a major foreign policy project they have already started, which is to develop deeper ties with Israel, in regards to security and military policy,” said Molavi. “So when it comes to Iran they want to use the G8 as a platform to push for sanctions within this framework.”

Canada’s intense support for the Israeli government has shaped a new era of Canada-Israel relations. Ottawa has arguably emerged as the staunchest pro-Israel capital in the world.

“Canada is so friendly that there was no need to convince or explain anything to anyone,” said right wing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, after a recent meeting in Ottawa with Canadian Foreign Minister Cannon. “We had amiable talks in a supportive atmosphere...we need allies like this in the international arena,” he said.

Beyond talk of sanctions, Iran is currently experiencing major turmoil. Massive protests swept across the country last summer after an election widely seen as tainted led to the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Social movements globally expressed solidarity with the protest movement in Iran. Political leaders in Europe, the US and Canada also backed the protest movement.

“With Iran in the picture, Ottawa is using any avenue they can to build support for sanctions on Iran, including manipulative positions towards the protest movement in Iran,” Molavi told The Dominion. “Canada is claiming that they support the people in Iran, while pushing for sanctions that will impact the poorest people in the country first.”

Canada’s attempts to lock in sanctions on Iran contradict the demands of leading dissidents in Iran, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
“We oppose military attack on Iran or economic sanctions because that’s to the detriment of the people,” Ebadi said in March 2010.

Canada’s appeal for “further sanctions” on Iran will be in the media spotlight during the Toronto G8 summit.

It will be critical for grassroots movements organizing in opposition to the G8 summit in Canada to identify the major gaps between the push by G8 leaders for sanctions and the anti-sanctions positions of Iran’s most vocal opposition leaders.

Stefan Christoff is a regular contributor to The Dominion and is at
http://www.twitter.com/spirodon.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

Lawrence Cannon at CTBTO

Enriched Hypocrisy

Moira Peters — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:40:37 +0000

Before criticizing Iran's nuke program, Canada should look within

PETERBOROUGH—Eight of the world’s most powerful leaders are meeting in Huntsville, Ontario, this June to discuss Iran’s nuclear power industry. Concerned over Tehran’s enrichment of uranium, Prime Minister Stephen Harper intends to use Canada’s leadership of the Group of Eight (G8) to push for sanctions against the Middle Eastern country. Anti-nuclear activists, citing the prominence and recent growth of Canada's own nuclear industry, are pointing out contradictions between domestic policy and Harper's intentions at the G8.

Reacting to Tehran’s February 9 announcement that Iran had successfully enriched uranium at its Natanz nuclear facility south of Tehran, Harper announced in a February press release his intentions to push the G8 to adopt harsher policies against Iran. “Canada will continue to work with our allies to find strong and viable solutions, including sanctions, to hold Iran to account.”

Harper said he aimed to reach an agreement amongst the G8 countries prior to the G20 meetings, as “the sting of a co-ordinated approach is always felt more strongly.”

Canada hopes China, also a nuclear supplier and one of Iran’s leading trading partners, won’t want to risk isolation from the other major industrialized economies and will therefore be pressured into supporting sanctions. (A similar strong-arm tactic was used against Russia in 1997 to gain support for the G7-led invasion of Serbia.)

Two days after Tehran's February 9 announcement, General Electric (GE) was awarded permission to enrich uranium in Peterborough, Ontario—an activity in which the provincial government had invested $15 million last November.

Peterborough’s GE plant, located in the heart of the city, already produces nuclear materials in partnership with the Japanese company Hitachi. GE-Hitachi submitted an environmental assessment proposal in 2007 to produce "low enriched uranium fuel bundles." This would require an upgrade of the plant’s status to “nuclear installation,” in turn requiring higher insurance costs.

Residents are concerned. The facility is immediately adjacent to residential areas and the Prince of Wales Elementary School, where 120 parents showed up to the only public meeting on the issue. Notice was given to parents just two days before the meeting, while residents were not informed at all.

The Environmental Assessment Report (EAR) submitted by GE stated the facility is located among “the most vulnerable catchments in the city for floods.” (The facility had in fact flooded during a city-wide flood in 2002.) The EAR also noted that in two years out of ten, water contamination from radiation reached a level 20 per cent above Health Canada’s 2006 safety levels. At the January hearing on the EAR, it was also noted that radiation contamination levels in the air at the plant had been steadily increasing over the past few years.

None of the parents, nor any other residents interviewed for this article, had been aware of this. All expressed the assumption that governmental regulations would keep them safe.

At the public hearing on GE's submission (which was scheduled for the afternoon of a weekday in Ottawa), the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC—the federal nuclear regulating agency) ruled in favour of GE-Hitachi’s proposal, in spite of a number of written submissions from Peterborough residents to the CNSC, opposing the the proposal.

According to The Arthur, Trent University’s student newspaper, Canadian government approval of a nuclear plant is a “slap in the face” to the residents of the City of Peterborough, given the success of a recent mass mobilization against uranium mining. In 2008, local organizing succeeded in having the city council pass a motion calling for a moratorium on the mining of uranium in Sharbot Lake, 150km to the east. The Arthur wrote that some Peterborough residents felt the Sharbot Lake ruling should have been an indictment of the entire nuclear industry.

According to Roy Brady, an activist with anti-nuclear group Safe and Green Energy (SAGE), if Canada is serious about nuclear non-proliferation, all aspects of the uranium cycle must be examined, including our own domestic uses.

This was not the case for GE, Brady said in an interview, given the proposed plant’s environmental assessment states that GE lacks a decommissioning plan.

In his recent book, Atomic Accomplice, Paul McKay, founding editor of the now-defunct (and Peterborough-published) Nuclear Free Press, said Canadian-built CANDU reactors were designed as part of the infamous Manhattan Project in the development of the nuclear bomb. The CANDU reactors produce more plutonium, the main reactive material in the nuclear bomb, than any other reactor type. The uranium bundles to be produced in Peterborough are destined for such CANDU reactors.

Craig Severence, who recently authored Business Risks and Costs of Nuclear Power, in lambasting the economics of the nuclear industry, pointed out the only “legitimate” reason to enrich uranium is for use in a nuclear power plant.

“The continued promotion and sale worldwide of civilian nuclear reactors gives nations the excuse to operate uranium enrichment programs,” Severence wrote in his report, pointing to Iran as an example.

According to McKay, Iran's nuclear ambitions can even be linked to Canada's export of nuclear technology to India, one of Iran's regional rivals. Canada provided India with nuclear material despite knowledge that the country was attempting to build an atomic bomb—which India certainly did, conducting the first successful test in 1974.

Critics of Canadian foreign policy point out that despite commonly-held beliefs, Canada's non-proliferation record is questionable. Yves Engler noted one example of this in his book, Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, stating that Canadian military jets stationed in Europe were armed with nuclear warheads during the Cold War—even after all American nuclear silos were removed from the country. As McKay said, “Canada’s nuclear record is far from innocent.”

Leading up to the G8 summit in Huntsville this summer, Canadians might wonder if the G8 would be worrying about nuclear non-proliferation issues now had countries like Canada kept a distance from nuclear trade with the Middle East in the first place.

The hope among nuclear critics is for G8 and G20 countries that have strong nuclear industries to realize how closely their nuclear programs play into Iran's.

Matthew Davidson is a student of history and international development at Trent University. He is actively engaged with both anti-nuclear and G8 resistance organizing in Peterborough.

Nuclear Bud

Nuclear Kids

NB Port Workers Said NO CANDU

Moira Peters — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 05:11:24 +0000

Argentina honours Saint John longshoremen for 1979 act of solidarity

They said, “We don’t care about our wages
and we don’t care about the boss.
When your brothers and sisters are dying,
there’s lines you just don’t cross.”
No Hot Cargo for Argentina!
No Hot Cargo for Argentina!
No Hot Cargo for Argentina!

—Maritimes folk singer Nancy White, in “No Hot Cargo,” a song inspired by the 1979 event this article celebrates.

FREDERICTON—Hundreds gathered at Lily Lake Pavilion in Saint John on Saturday, March 13, to honour the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 273 for what has been called "the single most dramatic example of Canadian trade union solidarity with workers in the Third World."

Argentina’s Ambassador to Canada, Arturo Guillermo Bothamley, presented the Orden de Mayo to Pat Riley, business agent for the Saint John Local of the ILA, for the union’s 1979 protest that prevented the shipment of heavy water to Argentina’s military dictatorship—an action that resulted in the release of 11 political prisoners. The Orden de Mayo is the highest award given by the Argentine government to citizens of another country for courage, honour and solidarity.

“We are going to pay an old debt from the heart to some people who put their security at risk for people thousands of miles away,” said Bothamley at the ceremony.

On the morning of July 3, 1979, port workers refused to cross a picket line on the west side of the Saint John harbour the day the workers were supposed to ship a load of heavy water to Argentina for the CANDU nuclear reactor Argentina had bought from Canada in 1973. Heavy water is a component necessary for the functioning of nuclear reactors fueled by unenriched uranium.

The picket had been organized by the NO CANDU committee, the New Brunswick Federation of Labour, and the Saint John and District Labour Council. With signs and buttons stating, "NO CANDU FOR ARGENTINA," and "HOT CARGO," the protesters demanded the release of 17 political prisoners in Argentina, most of whom were trade unionists.

The action was part of a national campaign started by the Group for the Defence of Civil Rights in Argentina—initiated by Argentine expatriates—in response to the brutal military dictatorship that took power in Argentina in 1976.

“The 1979 Argentine military junta was a rogue government in league with other rogue governments, such as the government of South Africa, which was itself notorious for its apartheid policies and its similar threat of acquiring nuclear capabilities," said Riley at the award ceremony.

"The military junta’s most appalling practices were not well-known. Whether you were a newspaper editor, a university professor or a university student, a trade unionist, or simply a person of conscience, you could well disappear if you spoke out about the inhuman practices of the junta.”

It is estimated that 10,000-30,000 people were tortured, murdered or “disappeared” between 1976 and 1983. The government of Canada was enthusiastically supporting business with Argentina, including the export of nuclear technology, despite the Argentine government’s refusal to sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The picket line was joined by members of many local unions, including the Canadian Paperworkers, the United Auto Workers, the International Association of Machinists, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Church groups and members from the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, Project Ploughshares and the Maritimes Energy Coalition also joined the picket.

As a result of the protest, 11 of the 17 political prisoners were released within days and three were sent into exile.

Another prisoner identified by the NO CANDU campaign, union leader Alberto Piccinini, was released a year later. During a visit to Canada, he expressed his gratitude to a group of Canadian workers: “Unity is the unity of all of us; and it must go beyond national boundaries. I am very clear that I am free today because of the struggle first of the people in my country and second because of workers elsewhere—especially in this beautiful country.”

At the March 13 award ceremony, Saint John mayor Ivan Court spoke of the workers’ decision to respect the picket line on the July morning, 31 years ago: “People matter first and foremost... So when the longshoremen in this city in 1979 said to the boss, ‘We’re not crossing the picket line. Life is more important than a paycheck,’ that’s what Saint John is all about... People were willing to say, ‘no,’ and ‘no’ did save lives,” he said.

"They were ordinary people knowing that they were doing something to try and change the living conditions—the lives—of people a long way away," said Barbara Byers of the Canadian Labour Congress at the ceremony. "But they were ordinary people taking extraordinary actions. They were ordinary people making history."

Byers went on to draw connections to current political issues in Latin America, including the recent coup d’etat in Honduras and the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement:

Today the widespread military dictatorships may be on the wane, but we now have a dictatorship of the free markets and free trade agreements. And the labour movement has been at the forefront of the resistance to that new kind of dictatorship going back to the fight against the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. We learned many lessons from those struggles and we are applying them to the current fight to oppose the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Colombia may not be ruled by a military dictatorship, but human rights violations taking place in that country are equally surreal. The dirty war there is being waged against trade unionists and leaders who dare to organize a union, lead a strike or oppose the government in any way.

Upon accepting the Orden de Mayo from Ambassador Bothamley, Pat Riley expressed his gratitude for the recognition of their action 31 years ago, and reflected on the event.

“The story of the 1979 NO CANDU for Argentina picket line was a story of immense courage, ingenuity and resolve. For the disappeared political prisoners. For the mothers of the disappeared. For the Group for the Defence of Civil Rights in Argentina. For the NO CANDU for Argentina committee and so many others. For the 1979 Port of Saint John picket line and demonstration. The determination to see justice done...was a path for those involved,” said Riley.

Marie-Christine Allard is a member of the New Brunswick Media Co-op. An original version of this article was published by the New Brunswick Media Co-op.

Argentina honours Saint John longshoremen

Concerns

Paula LaPierre — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:45:41 +0000

The Dialogue Denied Us

The Road Begins at the Bottom of Your Feet

hillarybain — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:37:15 +0000

The Longest Walk 2 speaks out for Mother Earth

“Being here, at this very moment, it’s going to be a moment in your history that you’re going to remember for all time,” American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Dennis Banks told participants of April's Longest Walk 2 at the Dooda Desert Rock Camp in the Navajo Nation.

Following in the footsteps of the 1978 AIM Longest Walk for native rights, on February 11, 2008, the Longest Walk 2 left on a six-month, 4,400-mile walk from Alcatraz Island to Washington, DC. The island, located off the coast of San Francisco, California, and former site of the infamous federal prison of the same name, is Ohlone territory and was the site of a historic re-occupation in 1968.

Thirty years after the original Longest Walk, many of the problems facing native communities and nations continue. Participants in 2008 are bringing attention to several concerns first raised in 1978. The Longest Walk 2 is stressing the need to protect Mother Earth against destructive industries, pollution and the devastation of sacred sites, such as San Francisco Peaks.

The Walk includes two main routes: the northern route, which follows the path marched in the 1978 walk; and the southern route. Both began in California and they will converge as they near Washington, where participants will stage a three-day Cultural Survival Summit. The Summit will precede the official presentation of a Manifesto for Change to the government of the United States on July 11, 2008.

The Walk has been traversing the snaking rivers, towering mountain ranges and winding highways, through thunderstorms, blazing heat, snow and even a tornado.

Dooda Desert Rock Resistance Camp

In the windy desert in the Navajo Nation, the southern route participants gathered for a stopover at the Dooda Desert Rock Resistance Camp. ‘Dooda’ means ‘No’ in the Navajo language and references the grassroots resistance campaign against the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired steam-electric power plant. The Dine Power Authority and Houston-based Sithe Global Power are awaiting an air permit decision from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). If approved, the project would generate air pollution equivalent to 12.5 million cars, according to local Dine (‘Navajo’) activists.

According to federal law, the EPA has one year to determine whether or not to grant a permit; however, the application was made in 2004. At the beginning of June, the EPA filed a consent decree in court declaring that a decision will be made by July 31, 2008. At the same time, however, there has been increasing press coverage about the declining air quality, largely due to two existing power plants in the region. According to recent news coverage, San Juan County, New Mexico, reached the federal standard for maximum ozone levels in mid-June. An EPA report stated that in the year 2000 alone, the existing power plants and coal mines in the county released 13 million pounds of toxic chemicals, including sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and airborne mercury.

Dine elders in the areas most directly threatened began organizing opposition to the proposed power plant in 2003 and the Dooda Desert Rock Committee was created in 2004. A resistance camp has been maintained near the proposed power plant site for the past few years. In addition to environmental and health concerns, another principal issue is that the proposed site is immediately adjacent to a sacred burial ground.

“We want to make sure this doesn’t happen,” said Elouise Brown, a local Dine community leader at the forefront of the grassroots resistance to the project. She explained that at the beginning, only a handful of people were involved and that she was often alone at the site: “I would just sit there and cry and pray.”

Over the last few years, the resistance camp and the campaign have been receiving visitors and supporters such as those taking part in the Longest Walk 2. Brown explained to participants that many others from neighbouring towns and further afield have also been supporting the Dooda Desert Rock campaign: “They felt that if this was happening in their hometown, they wouldn’t want it going on.”

Dennis Banks explained to the group that he had grown up in a military boarding school and always dreamed of a military career. When he enlisted and was serving in Japan, thousands of people would protest the expansion of a US military base. The US troops would watch as Japanese police hit people’s heads "like coconuts."

“We said they would never win. How could they fight the US government?” asked Banks, comparing the situation to the one facing local Dine activists who oppose the proposed Desert Rock power plant. But in Japan, “they halted. They defeated the US Air Force...Now the farmland is booming with crops. On that side, the grass and wheat are growing up through the runways.”

Decades after leaving the armed forces and becoming one of the leaders of the American Indian Movement, Banks spoke from the other side of the fence, this time the one surrounding the proposed power-plant site. While looking over the spectacular desert in the direction of the sacred burial ground he said, “This is the way it should be left, just like this. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s almost asinine that archaeologists, anthropologists, mining people...come here and tell the ancestral inhabitants that there are no burial grounds here...Their interest is to grab the land,” continued Banks.

“It is being destroyed in the name of economic development, by people who do not live here or care about the area at all,” remarked Don Lindley, a Dine park ranger working at Mesa Verde in the Four Corners area.

He explained that what is occurring today is not new, but a continuation of something that has gone on for decades.

Interested in the resources on and in native lands, the US government imposed the Tribal Council government system in the 1920s. In 1931, despite the fact that the Great Depression had enveloped the country, the Livestock Reduction Act was passed and hundreds of cattle belonging to native people were taken away and killed, or herded away and left to decompose.

“While the rest of the United States was waiting in line at soup kitchens, they were over here terrorizing and killing our livestock,” said Lindley, explaining that from 1931 until 1956, white men working for the government rode the range enforcing the livestock quota.

Uranium mining has been occurring for decades in the Navajo Nation, fueling many of the nuclear weapons and nuclear power projects in the United States. There has been some attention to the plight of the Dine uranium workers, the affected communities and the alarming health problems, but instead of working to remedy the existing situation, the government is granting exploration permits for further uranium mining activities in the region.

Shortly before the Longest Walk 2’s visit to the area, Navajo Nation Tribal Council President Joe Shirley, Jr. voiced the Navajo Nation’s clear rejection of uranium mining to a Congressional Sub-Committee hearing in Flagstaff. The April 30 press release addressed the ‘Community Impacts of Proposed Uranium Mining Near Grand Canyon National Park’ and quoted Shirley at the hearing:

Today, the legacy of uranium mining continues to devastate both the people and the land. The workers, their families and their neighbours suffer increased incidents of cancers and other medical disorders caused by their exposure to uranium...The mines, many simply abandoned, have left open scars in the ground with leaking radioactive waste. The companies that processed the uranium ore dumped their waste in open-–and in some cases unauthorized-–pits, exposing both the soil and the water to radiation...The Navajo people have been consistently lied to by companies and government officials concerning the effects of various mining activities. Unfortunately, the true cost of these activities is understood only later, when the companies have stolen away with their profits leaving the Navajo people to bear the health burdens.

The Most Bombed Nation On Earth

Just over two months after visiting Dooda Desert Rock and walking through the Navajo Nation, the Longest Walk 2 participants arrived at the Y-12 National Security Complex, just outside of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Managed for the National Nuclear Security Administration by Babcock and Wilcox Technical Services Y-12, a private corporation, the Complex has been using uranium from the Navajo Nation, among other places, for decades.

According to the sign in front of Y-12:

The Electromagnetic Separation Plant was a Manhattan Project facility built in 1943 to separate U-235 from U-238. Material for the first atomic bomb was produced here. In place of unavailable copper, nearly 14,000 tons of silver were borrowed from the US Treasury for use on the manufacturing equipment. The plant was constructed by Stone and Webster Engineering and was operated by Tennessee Eastman from 1943-1947.

Approximately 30 people walked eight miles to the fence at one of the entrances to the plant. Eleven security officers in uniform walked down the driveway and watched as the Walk formed a line along the fence facing Y-12 and stood praying, drumming and chanting. Participants from different places, including Hiroshima and the Navajo Nation, shared their prayers with the Walk and the dozen local peace activists who joined them at the Complex.

“We stand against this plant that represents death and destruction,” remarked local peace activist Erik Johnson.

Activists involved with the Oak Ridge Peace and Environmental Alliance have been gathering in front of the Y-12 National Security Complex to hold a vigil every Sunday evening for the last seven years. Others have been doing the same every Monday morning for the past five years.

While most people are aware that the bombs constructed at the Y-12 complex and elsewhere were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of the Second World War, very few are aware that literally hundreds of these bombs have been dropped on a nation much closer to home. When asked what they think is the most bombed nation on Earth, most people pinpoint Japan, Vietnam, Germany, Lebanon, England, Iraq, or other countries. In fact, the most bombed nation on Earth is the Western Shoshone Nation in Nevada, visited by the northern route of the Longest Walk 2.

In 1863, during the Civil War, Americans needed safe passage west to the gold mines in California in order to fund the war. The Treaty of Ruby Valley, a treaty of peace and friendship with the Western Shoshone covering 60 million acres, was written and signed that year. This treaty did not cede any territory, despite the fact that there was a military camp whose soldiers were engaging in the murder and rape of Western Shoshone community members and despite the fact that the translator told the Shoshone that if they did not agree they would all be shot.

Over the past 150 years, however, settlers and the US government have gradually taken over the vast majority of Western Shoshone territory, leaving only tiny reservations. In 1962, the government of the United States established that the Western Shoshone had lost their lands through “gradual encroachment” and a decade later began suing elders for “trespassing” on their own ancestral lands. In 1979, the Indian Claims Commission allotted 26 million dollars for 24 million acres of “lost” Western Shoshone territory; the Western Shoshone did not accept the money or the unilateral extinguishment of their Treaty rights.

According to Western Shoshone elder and Western Shoshone Defense Project founder Carrie Dann, 90 per cent of the land included in the Treaty of Ruby Valley is currently occupied by US government claims. Among these is the huge Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada, home to nuclear, biological and chemical warfare testing. From the 1950s to the present day, there have been over one thousand nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site, located within Nellis and within Western Shoshone territory.

Underground plutonium testing continues at the base. After September 11, 2001, a new facility for biological and chemical weapons testing was built on the same base. Plans for the detonation of 700 tons of explosives with a nuclear atomic warhead detonation device in June 2006 were postponed several times due to massive opposition and were finally cancelled in July 2007. The exercise at the Nevada Test Site, named “Divine Strake,” would have been the largest open-air chemical explosion ever carried out by the Pentagon.

Dann recalls the impacts of some of the earlier nuclear tests in the 1970s and particularly after 1976, when “about 10 per cent of the calf population was deformed in some way or another.” Dann also spoke of the contamination of water in Western Shoshone communities and of health problems such as leukemia, diabetes and birth defects.

Earth versus Resources

The Western Shoshone, their lands, air and water are also affected by the intensive open-pit mining activities in their territory. It is the second biggest gold-mining region in the world, with dozens of companies present, including three of the world’s largest gold corporations: Barrick Gold, Newmont and Goldcorp. Baroid Drilling Fluids, a subsidiary of the infamous military industry leader Halliburton, has been mining barite and molybdenum-–a metal used in steel alloys with diverse military and industrial uses.

The Western Shoshone Defense Project is currently struggling against Barrick Gold’s attempts to expand the Cortez gold mine in Horse Canyon, an important sacred site for the Western Shoshone. Barrick announced the gold deposit ‘discovery’ in February 2003 as one of the largest gold deposits in the United States and has been aggressively attempting to divide and buy out the Western Shoshone communities and leaders in the area.

“These big corporations with billions of dollars-–that’s who we’re up against,” remarked Larson Bill, a Western Shoshone community leader and Tribal Council member. “It’s kind of amazing that people in the United States, even the Congressmen, don’t know what’s going on out here. They have no clue what’s going on.”

Faced with some of the most destructive industries on the planet, such as the military and mining industries, Dann emphasizes the roots of the struggles of the Western Shoshone in the video Our Land, Our Life: The Struggle for Western Shoshone Land Rights. "To a traditional, indigenous person, land means life. All the things that you have-–they all come from this Earth. Today, they call those things resources. Today, those resources are taken in the name of economy, name of money. Who does that? Multinational corporations. They don’t care. They’re not going to be here tomorrow. And what do these companies care about the children of these children? They don’t care! 'Cause they’ll be gone! Soon as they take the resources out, they will be gone."

Dann also asks all of us if we are prepared “to dedicate ourselves to the next generations to come. Or are we just ready to accept things as they are and to hell with tomorrow, to hell with the future generations? And that is one of the reasons that I try so hard to protect the rights of indigenous peoples all over the world, because they’re the ones still related to the earth. They’re still close to the earth. And they do care.”

These are the questions, issues and struggles to which the Longest Walk 2 is bringing attention, mile by mile, through reservations, towns and cities across the country. Along the way-–and via the Longest Walk 2 website--people of diverse nations, colours and countries have been joining them, making donations, sharing their own histories and situations, and welcoming the Walk into their nations, communities and homes. The Manifesto for Change to be presented to the US government is also being compiled over the course of the walk.

Back at Dooda Desert Rock, Banks insisted that action is the next necessary step after hearing about or witnessing the ongoing injustice and destruction: “That should be an obligation. You should use what you have learned.”

“The road begins at the bottom of your feet.”

Sandra Cuffe is an independent journalist, activist, and the descendant of white European settlers.

The Longest Walk 1

The Longest Walk 2

Manufactured Crises on Stolen Land

dru — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:34:10 +0000

The Chalk River Reactor and the Kichesipirini Algonquin (part two of three)

[Continued from Part I]

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is an independent federal agency charged with protecting health, safety, security and the environment and to respect Canada's international commitments on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

The CNSC has two components: a staff organization and the Commission Tribunal. The Tribunal is designed to make independent decisions on the licensing of nuclear-related activities in Canada.

The Commission reports to parliament through the minister of natural resources, but does not deal directly with the minister. According to the Guide Book for Heads of Agencies, "Maintaining an arm's length relationship to ministers is particularly important for those organizations whose mandate is to make decisions that determine or regulate the privileges, rights or benefits of Canadians."

The Nuclear Safety and Control Act does allow cabinet to issue directives but they must be of "general application on broad policy matters" [section 12]. It goes against the rule of law and the principle of separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive that the government exercise any authority regarding the autonomy of the CNSC.

The minister is not authorized to give any directive to the CNSC on a specific case.

But that is what has taken place in the case of Chalk River, when the Harper government removed Linda Keen from her post and reversed the CNSC's decision to shut down the reactor.

The Chalk River reactor, however, is not the only dangerous nuclear project on Algonquin land toward which the CNSC has turned a blind eye.

Also located within Kichesipirini jurisdiction and unceded traditional territory is SRB Technologies Canada Inc. (SRBT), a tritium light manufacturer operating in a mini-mall on Boundary Rd., Pembroke, Ontario. This nuclear facility is located near several businesses, a hockey arena and a residential area, including new subdivisions with young families.

SRBT uses tritium to manufacture glow-in-the-dark signs.

This company is considered a source of tritium environmental contamination in the Pembroke area. A growing body of evidence suggests that tritium is mutagenic (mutates genes causing hereditary defects) and teratogenic (causes malformations of an embryo or fetus). The populations most sensitive to tritium are considered to be fetuses, young children and women of childbearing age.

CNSC researchers found that levels of radioactive tritium in the groundwater on plant property were up to 80 times the permissible limit for drinking water. SRBT does not yet have an approved decommissioning plan to deal with the current contamination issues and no financial guarantee for decommissioning or cleaning up their mess.

As a Class 1 nuclear facility, it was required to have such a plan under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, which came into effect in 2000. The federal nuclear regulator's report called SRBT's record on environmental protection, "significantly below requirements." Previously, CNSC inspectors identified several irregularities and illegal operations by SRBT while under Commission licence. Despite this, SRBT was continually awarded new licences and allowed to continue operations.

Only after Kichesipirini environmental steward Al Villeneuve intervened did the CNSC reverse its endorsement of the at-fault SRBT, in early 2007.

Villeneuve argued: "We have been here since time out of mind. As our ancestors did, we continue to follow 'Algonquin Law' as it pertains to the outright protection of this Earth, our Mother, and all that exists on it."

Referring to a long documented history of persecution and genocide, he added: "Through history from first contact in 1603, the Kichesipirini/Algonquin people have suffered greatly at the hands of non-natives and government[s]. We suffered as a nation, perhaps the greatest attempted genocide in Canada...

"SRB Technologies," continued Villeneuve, "in order to reduce their toxic, nuclear waste contaminating their site, believes it is better to use our river for a 'nuclear dump.' You have no right to pollute the waters of our spiritual and historic heartland...You have no right to dump any garbage...into our waters.

"While this land and this river is still under dispute with our nation and the governments of Canada and Ontario, we, as members of the Kichesipirini/Algonkin nation, will do all that is in our power as a nation of people to alert others of any destruction of our homelands, including the United Nations."

Villeneuve went on to hold the members of the CNSC, including Linda Keen, personally responsible for any breaches of law, associated damages and the continued persecution of the Kichesipirini Algonquins.

To this day, the Algonquins have never signed a land treaty pursuant to the Constitution of Canada. Following the 1997 Delgamuukw decision by the Supreme Court, we now know that "Lands reserved for the Indians" include not only First Nations reserves set aside deliberately, but also all land subject to valid First Nation claims of Aboriginal title.

The Algonquin situation is unique in that reserves have been illegally set aside in unceded Algonquin territory. Algonquin citizens, therefore, have the constitutionally protected right to identify with traditional governance if they so choose. Traditional governance must meet legal requirements according to established rules of law, including international law.

The Canadian Supreme Court has determined that those political entities in place prior to sovereignty assertion of the Crown, which have never come under domestic laws such as the Indian Act, are still considered to exist and have jurisdiction. The laws of these entities supersede domestic laws, municipal laws and the Indian Act. Those individuals residing on reserves, or land not recognized by Indian Act registration, still hold inherent Aboriginal rights to participate in governance according to traditional custom and practices, and can seek compensation for infringements.

Currently, nothing in the Nuclear Safety Act relieves the Commission of liability in respect to a tort or extra-contractual civil liability to which the Commission would otherwise be subject.

This guarantees that in an area of grave responsibility, such as nuclear safety, strong incentives are in place to ensure the strictest exercise of due diligence.

On April 1, 2007, however, the Government of Canada put into effect the Cabinet Directive on Streamling Regulation (CDSR) under the pretense of making regulatory improvements. If these regulatory changes are applied to nuclear safety, there will be a gradual shift away from safety and environmental protection as priorities. Regulatory activities resulting in the greatest overall benefit to current and future generations of Canadians would become the new objectives.

On November 18, 2007, the CNSC ordered the shut-down of the 50-year-old reactor after numerous previous concessions over safety concerns regarding the emergency power system not being connected to cooling pumps, as required to prevent a meltdown during possible disasters such as earthquakes.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn claimed that the Conservative government consulted with 800 healthcare facilities across Canada, including close to 250 nuclear medicine facilities reliant on the products to understand the impact of the shortage.

"From the government's discussion with medical experts, it was obvious--the isotope shortage was potentially very serious," he said.

"It was also clear, Mr. Chair, had we not acted, that people invariably would have died. We could not let that happen. We had to act, and we did," Lunn said during a hearing on the matter.

On December 10, the Conservative government issued a ministerial directive and ordered the CNSC to reopen the site. The CNSC, with Keen as president, refused, contending that a required back-up safety system be first installed to prevent the risk of a meltdown during an earthquake or other disaster.

On December 11, an emergency measure passed through the House of Commons overturned the watchdog's decision and the reactor was restarted for a 120-day run on December 16.

In a subsequent press release issued by the Commission on January 15, 2008, the CNSC announced that the Privy Council had adopted an Order in Council terminating Linda Keen’s position as president of the Commission be effective immediately.

Framed as emergency measures taken by a government concerned about the health and safety of Canadian citizens put at risk because of the shortage of medical isotopes, the failing reactor was reactivated and Linda Keen was fired from her position as nuclear safety watchdog.

"In effect, this was a manufactured crisis," says Dr. Ole Hendrickson. "The Harper government depicted the CNSC as being negligent by delaying critical medical diagnostic procedures for patients. This diverted attention away from AECL's [Atomic Energy of Canada Limited] negligence in failing to complete essential safety upgrades."

He says the Harper government was responding to pressure from corporate healthcare giant MDS Nordion and that the shortage of isotopes was an isolated problem that could have been managed. He speculates that by diverting attention from AECL's other problems, this emergency legislation helps the federal government maintain AECL's asset value for future privatization.

It would seem that the dependency of the nuclear medical industry on the facilities located at AECL and the apparent lack of safety-net planning and back-up alternatives are more a display of the inadequacies of the current parliamentary government, than any misjudgement of Linda Keen in her capacity as nuclear safety watchdog.

The Sierra Club of Canada has called on parliament to protect the Nuclear Safety Commission from political interference. It insisted the watchdog be granted powers of independence similar to those given to Superior Court judges and the auditor general. "The safety of Canadians is threatened when our Nuclear Safety Commission is subject to the kind of bullying the minister has demonstrated," Stephen Hazell, the Sierra Club's executive director, told the Canadian Press.

A lead editorial in the magazine The New Scientist condemned Canada's handling of the Chalk River reactor. "Canada is sending a dangerous message to these countries when it is prepared to undermine its own watchdog and compromise the protection of its workers and the public in order to keep one of its reactors open."

The deeper question, rarely discussed, remains that of the land that Chalk River laboratories are built on.

Professor of law John Borrows has argued that "Canada is built on a foundation of sand, as long as the rule of law is not consistently applied to Aboriginal peoples."

If Canada's legal foundations with regards to Aboriginal title are in question, where does that leave a nuclear facility built on unceded Algonquin territory?

[Read Part III: An Eagle Feather for Linda Keen?]

Migizi Kiishkaabikaan

Lies, Omissions and Nuclear Waste

dru — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:43:28 +0000

The Chalk River Reactor and the Kichesipirini Algonquin (part one of three)

On January 16, the Harper government made headlines when it fired Linda Keen from her post as president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). Under Keen's leadership, the CNSC had shut down the aging Chalk River nuclear reactor in November, and had been at odds with the Harper government ever since. Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn ostensibly fired Keen because of a "worldwide shortage" of medical isotopes supplied by the reactor allegedly caused by its closure. In Canada's media, the debate has been about whether Keen's firing violated the arm's-length nature of the CNSC, depriving it of the ability to make independent decisions.

What reports largely miss is the long history of lies, theft and radioactive contamination surrounding Chalk River Laboratories (CRL). If the reactor continues to operate, this history will find its way to the fore. The one-sided battle between Canadian government and corporations and the area's original inhabitants will continue until accountability, public health and the rule of law--the supposed mandate of organizations like the CNSC--are achieved.

Chalk River Origins

The mining project that became the infamous Port Radium began in 1890, when a prospector laid claim to a vein of silver and pitchblende on the shore of Sahtu, or Great Bear Lake. In the early 1940s, uranium from that site was needed for the Manhattan Project, the US-UK-Canadian intiative that built the first atomic bomb, and the mine was expropriated. Sahtugot'ine workers who were exposed to radioactive materials but who were not warned of the danger began to die of exotic cancers years later; their land and water was contaminated with radioactive materials.

From there, the uranium headed south.

The Combined Policy Committee, the three-country committee charged with collaboration in the creation of an atomic bomb, mandated the construction of the world's first large-scale heavy water reactor in Canada. The ultra-secret project required immediate access to very deep water for generation and cooling purposes.

On August 21, 1944 it was decided to locate the heavy water project at Chalk River, Ontario, situated along the shores of the Ottawa River. Here begins the relationship between the nuclear industry, the historic "Kichesippi River" and the Algonquin people.

In an article written in 2000, professor of psychology and historian Evan Pritchard has written that "One band of 'Anishinabe-Algonkians,' the 'Kiche-sipi-rini' or 'People of the Great River,' were possibly the first of this ancient culture to settle down in one place, Allumette Island.

"Allumette is the largest island in the Ottawa River, the river which forms the boundary between Ontario and Quebec, and there is evidence of sedentary Anishinabe-Algonkian settlements there going back at least 6,280 years, and occupation in the area dating back 7,000 years as it became inhabitable after the Ice Age. From this power base in the center of the trade route, their influence and language spread throughout North America. Hence they have been called 'The First People.'

"Allumette Island," Pritchard continues, "was a turning point in the civilization. There is little doubt that the Anishinabe-Algonkians of Allumette are the direct descendants of the so-called "Clovis" people, long considered the oldest group of Native Americans."

The Kichesipirini, in accordance with the Aboriginal legal system -- in place prior to any sovereignty assertions by any imperial Crown, controlled economic activity and political diplomacy of the Ottawa River and surrounding region. Initially, that jurisdiction was to have been protected but the government suddenly changed its mind in 1837, cancelling the promises of a reserve, preferring to move people from their traditional land to areas away from the river. The move opened the door for exploitation of Kichesipirini territory by the lumber trade, and destroyed the Algonquin traditional governance system.

While those who agreed to move to the established reserves or who joined other satellite historic bands were then federally "recognized," many others from the Ottawa, Renfrew and Pontiac Counties did not re-locate and were later referred to as "stragglers." The governments of Canada, Ontario and Quebec, like the colonial imperial governments that preceded them, consistently treated the traditional Algonquin people as squatters on their own land. The Kichesipirini, despite continuing to exist within their territory, were administratively erased from the public record through Canadian domestic Aboriginal policy.

More than 3,000 hectares along the Ottawa River were expropriated, including farm land from several Kichesipirini families, 30 km northwest of Pembroke, Ontario. Thus, Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) had its beginnings. The area is a place of spiritual significance to the Algonquin people because of the depth of the water and its proximity to other sacred sites, including ancestral gravesites.

The local people, predominately Kichesipirini Algonquin, were told that what was being built was a plastic processing plant.

During the first several decades of operation at Chalk River, no safety standards or protocols were in place. Nuclear wastes were handled carelessly, causing widespread radioactive contamination of the site far beyond what would be considered acceptable standards today.

Local residents were never properly informed. Civilians, especially the persons of Aboriginal descent more dependent on local natural resources for food, have still never been identified or monitored. According to expert sources, radioactive wastes are still leaking into the Ottawa River, which is an important source of food, recreation and drinking water used by numerous communities downriver in Ontario and Quebec, including the city of Ottawa.

This site, with its legacy of secrecy, expediency, and experimentation is now owned and operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), the federal crown corporation that designs and markets CANDU reactors.

The reactor built at Chalk River began operation in 1957, and has been slated for retirement for years. In 2006, AECL assured the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) that safety upgrades would be made to the reactor, including emergency power supply to two heavy-water pumps. AECL then lied when they submitted a Safety Analysis for NRU relicensing, claiming that the required safety modifications were completed. During a routine meeting in November of 2007, CNSC learned that the pumps were in fact not connected.

AECL loses revenue to a private company. Under the Conservative Mulroney government, one of AECL's hopes of financial sustainability, the lucrative revenue from medical isotope productions, was sold from the Crown corporation to the private firm MDS Nordion. Most of the revenue from isotope productions would always go to MDS Nordion as per their 40 year supply agreement. As a result, taxpayers carried the expenses of reactor and isotopes production, liabilities, decommissioning, and maintenance but MDS Nordion recieved most of the profits that accrued.

The local population, not having recovered from declines in the forest industry, is now becoming dependent on the subsidized nuclear industry as their major employer and economic contributor. Lacking economic diversity, fearful of job loss and community revenue losses, few local people or community leaders will now oppose this leeching giant, this Windego, on their shorelines.

[Read part II: Manufactured Crises on Stolen Land]

Paula Lapierre is the Principal Sachem of the Kichesipirini Algonquin First Nation

Chalk River

What the Tar Sands Need

dru — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:39:45 +0000

Processing requires massive inputs of water, energy, land, labour

Water

For each barrel of oil produced from the tar sands, between two and 4.5 barrels of water is needed. The water is used in the process of extracting bitumen from the naturally occurring the tar sand. The bitumen is later "upgraded" into synthetic crude oil.

In 2007, the government of Alberta approved the withdrawal of 119.5 billion gallons of water for tar sands extraction, of which an estimated 82 per cent came from the Athabasca River. Of that, extraction companies were only required to return 10 billion gallons to the river.

Most of the water used ends up in giant, toxic tailing ponds. As of 2006, tailing ponds covered 50-square kilometers of former boreal forest. By 2010, according to the Oil Sands Tailings Research Facility, the industry will have generated 8 billion tons of waste sand and 1 billion cubic metres of waste water--enough to fill 400,000 olympic-sized swimming pools. Today, the largest human-made dam by volume of materials is the Syncrude tailing pond, a few kilometres from the Athabasca river.

The waste sand and water contain naphtha and paraffin, which are used in the extraction process, and oil leftovers like benzene, naphthenic acid and polyaromatic hydrocarbon, among others. Chemicals found in the tailing ponds are known to cause liver problems and brain hemorrhaging in mammals, and deformities and death in birds.

It is difficult to estimate the volume of toxins that make their way into the Athabsca, but downstream communities like Fort Chipewyan have reported high occurrences of rare cancers, lupus, multiple sclerosis and other diseases in recent years. Local fishermen have reported boils and deformities in fish. One winter, an oil slick was discovered under the ice. Syncrude later admitted that there had been a spill about 200 kilometres upstream.

The Athabasca also feeds Great Slave Lake, Deh Cho (the Mackenzie River) and vast northern watersheds. Water from the Athabasca flows all the way to the Arctic Ocean, and plays an essential role in the lives of indigenous communities and vast areas of Boreal forest.

Energy

Between digging up the tar sand, separating out the bitumen, and subsequently upgrading it to synthetic heavy crude, the extraction process requires vast amounts of energy. Because the tar sand and bitumen must be heated, about 1/6 of the energy provided by a barrel of oil is expended to extract one barrel of oil from tar sand.

Opponents of the tar sands say that burning a relatively clean fuel like natural gas to produce oil undermines any efforts to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions and transition to sustainable fuel sources. According to estimates from the Pembina Institute, the tar sands will account for 25 per cent of Canada's emissions by 2020, if Kyoto targets are reached.

The vast amounts of natural gas needed to extract millions of barrels of oil per day are leading to an anticipated shortage of supply. As a result, several energy megaprojects have been proposed.

Perhaps the most contentious of the proposals is the $7 billion Mackenzie Gas Project, a 1220 kilometre pipeline that runs along the Mackenzie River Valley, from the Arctic Ocean to Alberta's northern border. The project would connect the estimated 82 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Mackenzie River delta with the tar sands extraction plants to the south.

A second project, the Alaska Gas Pipeline would connect Alaska's north slope, home to an estimated 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, with the Mackenzie valley route.

In part to make up for the natural gas supply taken up by the tar sands, Liquid Natural Gas terminals have been proposed in multiple locations on the west coast, east coast and along the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The terminals would receive natural gas from tankers incoming from the Middle East, Russia and other overseas sources.

Natural gas supply is still not enough to keep up with anticipated growth, leading industry to explore options such as nuclear power. Alberta's first nuclear power plant has been proposed in the town of Peace River, though it has faced some local opposition.

Much to the dismay of environmentalists, there is also discussion of building new coal-burning power plants into future tar sands upgrading facilities.

Labour

The Conference Board of Canada predicted in 2006 that Alberta would face a shortage of 332,000 workers by 2025. The figure has been dismissed as exaggerated (it is based on the current rate of growth continuing unimpeded), but it seems to be an accurate reflection of the concern Alberta's industrial sector has shown recently.

That tar sands require a massive influx of labour is not disputed. Another estimate says that 20,000 new positions will be created in the tar sands over the next three years.

The signs of a labour shortage are already apparent in Alberta. Workers from Newfoundland and the Maritimes are offered flights to and from Fort McMurray for the duration of their work term. Grocery stores and fast food joints offer hourly wages in the double digits, and sometimes offer signing bonuses.

Increasingly, workers are brought in from countries like China and the Philippines. In 2006, Immigration Canada issued 15,172 new "temporary work permits" in Alberta, bringing the number of temporary workers to 22,392.

Temporary workers differ from immigrants in that they have no access to immigration services, and can effectively be sent home. According to some reports, the workers' temporary status leaves the door open to abuse. In one case, 12 men brought in by a trucking company were charged $500 per month to live in a three-bedroom bungalow.

The temporary foreign workers program has sparked a debate over the development of the tar sands.

"Most skilled workers would prefer to have 20 years of stable employment rather than seven or eight years of frantic development," writes Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour. If the pace of development was slowed, he writes, the need for temporary foreign workers would diminish.

Currently, development is heading in the opposite direction, with plans to increase production fivefold in the next twenty years. Regulations are being "streamlined," and plans are in place to further increase the number of foreign workers.

Land

Open pit mining of tar sands, according to the Government of Alberta, involves "clearing trees and brush from a site and removing the overburden - the topsoil, muskeg, sand, clay and gravel - that sits atop the oil sands deposit." The "overburden" that is removed is up to 75 metres (about 25 stories) deep, and the underlying tar sands are typically between 40 and 60 metres deep.

After trees and brush are clearcut and either burned or sent to sawmills, the area is drained, and any local rivers are rerouted. Giant trucks then remove soil, clay and sand to uncover the prized tar sands. The sands are then removed and taken to plants to be processed. In the end, an average of four tonnes of earth must be removed to render one barrel of oil.

In addition to tailing ponds (see "Water"), vast amounts of waste sand are generated. These sands, still containing traces of bitumen and other chemicals, are inhospitable to life. Near Syncrude's extraction plant, for example, a vast desert stretches over the horizon. The expanse shows no signs of life, and carries the overpowering smell of asphalt.

The tar sands cover an estimated 141,000-square kilometres, of which approximately 3,400-square kilometres will be strip mined if currently-approved projects go forward.

Government regulations require the strip-mined land to be "reclaimed," and returned to a "stable, biologically self-sustaining state." According to Syncrude's web site, this means "productive capability at least equal to its condition before operations began." Syncrude envisions "a mosaic landscape dominated by productive forests, wetland areas alive with waterfowl and grasslands supporting grazing animals."

So far, Suncor says it has reclaimed 858 hectares, accounting for less than 9 per cent of the land it has mined since 1967. Syncrude has mined 18,653 hectares, a little under a fifth of which it says it has reclaimed.

None of the land, however, has been officially certified as reclaimed by the government. Both corporations have billboard advertisements in Fort McMurray proclaiming the success of their reclamation programs. In the end, it is not clear that land will be fully reclaimed, and government agencies have been criticized as lax in enforcing regulations.

Water

Tar Sands and the American Automobile

dru — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:16:46 +0000

Heavy crude largely heads south to fuel American cars

The following is an edited excerpt from a forthcoming book by Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler, tentatively titled Stop Signs: A road trip through the USA to explore the culture, politics and economics of the car.

Across the globe, sprawling auto-dependent development is pushing oil extraction into increasingly sensitive environments. Far from the “light sweet crude” of the Niger Delta, the heavy oil trapped in Alberta’s tar sands is among the filthiest sources in the world; with up to three-quarters of the final product destined for the US market, tar sands oil extraction has been labelled the most destructive process known to mankind. Viewed from above, the tar sands are as picturesque as a pair of dirty lungs and the stench of tar can be smelled for miles. Amid a tangle of pipes, waste ponds and smoke, an environmental demolition derby of 50 ft, 300-tonne monster trucks roam a wasteland riddled with 200-foot-deep open pits. Gouged out with dinosaur-sized claws, Athabascan oil is mined, not pumped.

Describing the tar sands as “hideous marvels,” Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson writes: “They are terrible to look at, from the air or from the ground. They tear the earth, create polluted mini-lakes called tailing ponds that can be seen from space, spew forth air pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide."

“They are voracious users of freshwater,” continues Simpson. Extracting the bitumen (crude oil) from the thick and sticky mix of clay, sand and water is no easy feat and for every barrel of oil extracted, somewhere between two and four-and-a-half times as much water is needed to thin-out the mixture and separate the bitumen from the sand. To obtain this staggering volume of water, whole streams and rivers in the region have been drained and diverted. We don’t need Erin Brockovich to tell us something is wrong with the water; sucked out for the extraction process and then spat out again, most of it ends up contaminated with acids, mercury and other toxins. This wastewater has left Northern Alberta studded with toxic dumping pools, better known as ‘tailing ponds.’ Not only are the tar sands being blamed for Western Canada’s first ever bout of acid rain, the residues pumped into the Athabasca River have increased cancer rates downstream, particularly among First Nations communities dependent upon the waterway. The history of oil extraction has always been the history of suffering and the tar sands are no exception.

To produce a single barrel of oil, the tar sands extraction process requires two tonnes of sand. In 2003, Alberta’s Environment Ministry reported that 430-square kilometres of land had been “disturbed” for the oil sands. By summer 2006, that number had reached 2,000-square kilometres, nearly a five-fold increase in three years(even though only two per cent of the oil sands--now hailed as one of the world’s largest reserves--had been developed).

Thousands of acres of trees have already been clear-cut to make way for tar sands mining and if current plans unfold, a forest the size of Maryland and Virginia will be eliminated. The decline in forests has led to a major reduction in both the region’s grizzly bear and moose populations, with oil exploration also harming prairie birds and other animal life.

The environmental mayhem so far described is the tip of the iceberg. The tar sands represent the biggest increase in Canadian carbon emissions, with every barrel of synthetic oil produced releasing 188 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. Comparing the greenhouse emissions of a conventional barrel of crude to a barrel of tar sands oil, a New York Times article noted that, “A gallon of gas from oil sands, because of the energy-intensive production methods, releases three times as much carbon overall as conventionally produced gasoline.” The oil sands are located in and around Fort McMurray (aka Fort McMoney), a region with a population of 61,000. By 2015, Fort McMurray is expected to emit more greenhouse gases than all of Denmark.

Describing “the rush into the oil sands” a Wall Street Journal analyst writes: “For years, environmentalists have argued that higher gasoline prices would be good for the Earth because paying more at the pump would promote conservation. Instead, higher energy prices have unleashed a bevy of heavy oil projects that will increase emissions of carbon dioxide.” Rather than deter exploration, rising prices have led to increasingly unconventional and hazardous oil exploration exemplified by the Alberta tar sands.

The tremendous energy required to bring the sand to the surface for separation is largely provided by natural gas. (Oil sands consume about 500 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, an amount likely to increase to 1.25 billion cubic feet daily by 2016. The process is so inefficient that the natural gas required to produce one barrel of tar sands oil could heat a family home for two to four days. This process uses a relatively clean fuel to assist in the production of a dirtier one, prompting oil analyst Matt Simmons to describes the process as “making gold into lead.”

With over a hundred billion dollars projected in oil sands investments between 2006 and 2016, the industry is looking for a long-term, cost-effective energy source. High natural gas costs have the tar sands companies thinking big and looking north.

Not everyone is happy about this increasingly sticky situation. “Don’t ruin our land to fuel the US gas tank,” demanded Grand Chief of the Deh Cho in response to the proposed Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline, which, if built, would ship natural gas almost exclusively for use in northern Alberta oil extraction.

The natural gas pipeline seems almost benign compared to some of the ideas being floated by some oil companies who are described in the National Post as “warming to the idea of nuclear power as a source for their massive energy needs.” This is not the first time nuclear power has been proposed to liberate crude oil from the tar sands. In 1959 California's Richfield Oil drew a plan approved by the US Atomic Energy Commission to separate bitumen from sand by detonating a nine-kiloton atomic bomb. It was argued that the heat and energy created by an underground explosion would free the oil from the sand, but after the success of initial tests in Nevada, the idea was shelved due to concern among Canadian officials over the use of the A-bomb.

Cars at Shift Change

Nuclear Haste Makes Waste: Regulators

dru — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 03:52:39 +0000

Pembroke-based SRB denied license for tritium processing

In a significant regulatory shift, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) recently refused to renew the operating license of tritium-processing firm SRB Technologies in Pembroke, Ontario on the Ottawa River. This departure resulted largely from pressures exerted by a coalition of the Pembroke-based nuclear concern and environmental protection NGO Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Algonquin activists.

The Pembroke Decision was the first in history where CNSC, Canada’s chief nuclear regulator, denied a license application from a major nuclear industry firm. SRB intended to continue operating in Pembroke with tritium, a hazardous radioactive substance purchased from Ontario Power Generation Inc. for incorporation into glow-in-the-dark illuminating devices.
CNSC hearings revealed that SRB long operated in a failed, unfenced Pembroke industrial park with no plant confinement, no containment and no physical security. SRB’s plant lacked a buffer zone, and adjoined a busy Pembroke artery near a heavily used hockey arena, a well-fished river and a residential subdivision.

CNSC’s 31 January 2007 “reasons for decision” document explained: “the licensee has not taken all reasonable precautions to control the release of a radioactive substance within the site of the licensed activity into the environment.”

During the precedent-setting hearings, CNSC encouraged knowledgeable intervenors to separate fact from fiction. These included radiation protection professional Rosalie Bertell, PhD in biometrics, representing the International Institute of Concern for Public Health and Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, and landscape painter Alfred Villeneuve, an Algonquin guardian of the Ottawa River.

Villeneuve is an Algonkin artist living since birth in Renfrew County and has resided in Pembroke for the past twenty-three years. “We have been here since time out of mind,” Villeneuve told the Dominion.

“As our ancestors did, we continue to follow Algonkin Law as it pertains to the outright protection of this Earth, our Mother, and all that exists on it.”

He said that the use of the Ottawa River for the disposal of nuclear waste fits into a long pattern of grave mistreatment and attempted genocide against Algonquin Nations.

“Less than two dozen people escaped and survived, out of an entire nation … First the old men, boys, girls and women at their encampment on what is now known as the Ottawa River, and then the wholesale slaughter of the men that were hunting elsewhere in their territory.

“Even through this horrific act of genocide, our ancestors survived.”

“SRB Technologies,” said Villeneuve, “in order to reduce toxic, nuclear waste contaminating their site, believes it is better to use our river for a nuclear dump.”

“You have no right to pollute the waters of our Spiritual and Historic Heartland … You have no right to dump any garbage … into our waters.”

Villeneuve warned civil servants in Ottawa against allowing further release of nuclear waste.

“While this land and this river is still under dispute with our nation and the governments of Canada and Ontario, we … will do all that is in our power as a nation of people to alert others of any destruction of our homelands including the United Nations.”

CNSC’s decision document created a new class of license, called a “nuclear substance processing facility possession license” for SRB in Pembroke. The firm sought rapidly to amend this license, and CNSC scheduled a hearing on this amendment for 12 April in Ottawa.

Joseph Castrilli, counsel for Canadian Environmental Law Association representing Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County (CCRC) objects to CNSC procedures in “prematurely” scheduling this hearing, at which CCRC has been denied speaking rights. Only CNSC staff and SRB are presently scheduled to speak at the “premature” hearing, and the staff supports the SRB position.

Villeneuve told the Dominion: “We object to any SRB backdoor continuation whatsoever of activities.”

Ottawa River

Sanctioning Nukes?

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 22:14:30 +0000

Canada's nuclear exports and the Korean conflict

Pierre Trudeau speaking in September 1981 at the installation of AECL's Wolsung-1 Candu reactor in Kyong Sang Province of South Korea.

Pierre Trudeau speaking in September 1981 at the installation of AECL's Wolsung-1 CANDU reactor in Kyongsang Province in South Korea. Canada has officially opposed North Korea's development of nuclear weapons -- most recently, press reports speculated that Canadian naval vessels could play a role in enforcing sanctions against the country. Little thought has been given, however, to the role Canada's nuclear industry has played in the development of North Korea's bomb.

Media coverage of North Korea's nuclear tests has left out the ongoing sales of nuclear technology to South Korea by Canadian firms. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has supplied four reactors to Seoul's Korea Electric Power Development Corporation since 1973.

CANDU reactors manufactured in Ontario's Chalk River and Pembroke, and then marketed internationally, are much more efficient producers of (potentially weapons-grade) plutonium than competing models. Irradiated CANDU fuel can be extracted from the reactor during everyday operation, a convenience not offered by competing models.

In his 1988 semi-official history of AECL, University of Toronto History Professor Robert Bothwell relates that Canada's Trudeau Cabinet secretly approved AECL's commercial export of CANDU nuclear reactors in 1973.

Negotiations then began for the sale of CANDU reactors to Seoul's Korea Electric Power Corporation, which led to South Korea's second commercial nuclear power installation.

"In South Korea, as in Argentina, the military was never very far in the background; unlike Argentina, South Korea was [economically ascendant]," Bothwell writes.

For North Korea, nuclear exports were part of a series of provocative maneuvers made by the US and South Korea. The Pyongyang government criticized CANDU exports to South Korea for lowering South Korea's nuclear weapons acquisition threshold.

Pierre Trudeau paid an official visit to the Wolsung CANDU site in South Korea in September 1981 and spurred negotiations for additional CANDU reactors at Wolsung.

Three additional AECL CANDU units entered commercial operation at Wolsung between 1997and 1999. These exports temporarily boosted the faltering Canadian nuclear industry. In the summer of 1999, Ontario Hydro announced the long-term shutdown of numerous CANDU reactors at two generating stations for safety and performance reasons.

In 1985, Toronto Star columnist Diane Francis castigated briberies discovered in CANDU marketing to South Korea, Turkey and elsewhere. Direct AECL agents received a "finder's fee" of three to 10 per cent of reactor contract value. AECL deposited 10 per cent into a Luxemburg bank trust account for the agent's country contact.

AECL also exported CANDU research reactors to India and Taiwan.

India cooked the plutonium for its May 1974 Rajasthan nuclear weapons test in an AECL research reactor, whose sale was facilitated by Pierre Trudeau in a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

"With large taxpayer support, CANDU reactors have been exported to South Korea, Argentina, India, Pakistan, Romania and China," says Lynn Jones, a health professional and activist based in Pembroke, Ontario. Jones represents Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, a group that campaigns against the health and nuclear proliferation risks of the nuclear industry in Pembroke and nearby Chalk River.

North Korea was distressed by delivery of proliferation-prone and risky nuclear equipment and technology into the hands of its rivals in Seoul. Officials in Pyongyang were also incensed at alleged US violations of Article 2d of the 27 July 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, which was no more than a temporary ceasefire.

In a January 2003 statement reprinted by the Marxist-Leninist Daily, the North Korean government argued that, "Since the beginning of 1995, such [US] nuclear war exercises as Foal Eagle 95, Hoguk 906, Rimpac 98, 98 Hwarang and Ulji Focu Lens have been held against the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] almost every day, every year, on the ground, on the sea and in all parts of South Korea. In February 1997, the US brought depleted uranium shells from its base in Okinawa, Japan, into South Korea and deployed them."

In other cases, Canada's nuclear exports have attracted more attention from the media.

In March 2006, the Globe and Mail reported that, "Watchdog cleared tritium shipment to Iran." Referring to the highly controversial Pembroke nuclear manufacturer SRB Technologies Canada, the Globe reported: "The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved a shipment to Iran last year by a Canadian company of about 70,000 glow-in-the-dark lights containing tritium, a radioactive gas that can also be used as a component in hydrogen bombs."

Martin Mittelstaedt, the author of the Globe report, told the CBC on December 5 that Foreign Affairs in Ottawa was "extremely nervous" at SRB Technology's shipments of dual-use tritium to Iran.

Commercial CANDU reactors breed tritium, which Lynn Jones says is an agent of irreversible genetic damage, cancer, immune suppression and other pathologies.

According to Jones, the Globe report was based on correspondence between SRB Technologies and the Safety Commission obtained by her NGO through an Access to Information request with the Commission.

Jones told The Dominion that her Access to Information records reveal Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approval of SRB's application on September 26, 2002, to export tritium-containing devices to "eight organizations in Korea."

Radiation-protection professional Rosalie Bertell, Biostatistician and retired President of the Toronto-based International Institute of Concern for Public Health, is one of many who oppose the proliferation of nuclear technology--in the North as in the South.

"After 50 years of US threats to use nuclear bombs in North Korea, and most recently calling them part of the 'axis of evil,' North Korea has joined the Asian nuclear club and holds South Korea and thousands of US military hostage to the same threat," said Bertell.

"We must disarm the five nuclear nations which started this competition in order to achieve global peace."

What role does Canada's nuclear industry play in the geopolitics of the Korean peninsula? Stephen Salaff investigates.

Report recommends burying nuclear waste in Northern Ontario

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:00:08 +0000

The NWMO report recommends burying the nuclear waste in the Canadian Shield.

Northern Ontario--along with sites in Quebec, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick--has been selected as a potential disposal site for nuclear waste. In a statement issued November 3, 2005, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) recommended burial as a disposal method for Canada's nuclear waste.

Brennain Lloyd of Northwatch, a coalition of environmental and social just groups in northern Ontario, said that Canada has accumulated 45,000 tonnes of nuclear waste. According to Lloyd, one of the main concerns of burial is leakage from the nuclear waste containers.

The NWMO report, the result of a three year study, specifies what it calls "Adaptive Phased Management" as the most feasible option for the waste. The report recommends burying all Canada's nuclear waste at one site, preferably in a rock formation. The NWMO specifies the Canadian Shield in Northern Ontario as the optimal site for the burial. The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) has voiced concerns about the location of disposal in a remote area, which could include First Nations land. The AFN also questioned the legitimacy of the NWMO, whose members are primarily producers of nuclear fuel, and raised the possibility that once Canada finds a "solution" for its nuclear waste, other countries will want to import their nuclear waste to Canada. The Minister of Natural Resources is expected to respond to the NWMO's recommendations by February 1, 2006.

Where The Mountains Are Still Growing

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 22:27:48 +0000

Will mega dams in Manipur, India 'solve' climate change?

Manipur is an earthquake prone zone.

"I live in what's called a remote area which means that it's far from large cities. Of course, large cities are also remote from us - but it's not usually thought of like that."

Anna Pinto is sitting across from me in a small Montreal cafe. Her voice is deep, melodic and warm as she speaks of her home region in Northeastern India.

"On this very narrow strip [of land] we have some parts almost below sea level and some parts are the highest mountains including Mount Everest and the Tibetan Plateaus. We have a vast span of climates, in a very small geographical space. So we have this amazing biodiversity. It's a very rich area. We have lots and lots of different plants, animals, people. With biological diversity comes cultural diversity. In this little region we have over 100 different languages."

Pinto's pride and love of where she comes from is clear. I ask her why she has left her husband and children to travel thousands of miles to attend the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Montreal, held between November 28th and December 9th 2005.

Her face hardens. "Someone has to be here to say 'No.'"

Anna Pinto is a representative for an Indigenous people's organization based in the Indian state of Manipur called the Centre for Organization, Research and Education. She came to the UN conference to advocate for her people, and other peoples in her region, concerning the processes that are being developed to address climate change.

Climate change and its extreme weather manifestations are not an abstract notion for Pinto. For the past two years her region has experienced multiple floods on a massive scale. "When I say floods, I'm talking about floods that displace 15 million, 6 million, 4 million people at a time. The lowest figure that a flood has displaced is 4 million and that 4 million has been displaced 4 times in a year."

"You tell me if we can allow this to continue," she challenges me, her voice shaking. "It is intolerable. It is vicious."

She pauses and smiles apologetically, suddenly becoming aware of the anger in her voice. Pinto is enraged. The intensity of her emotions are a stark contrast to the relaxed suit-clad delegates that have been negotiating agreements throughout the conference, agreements that will affect millions of villagers in northeastern India.

Ironically, it is not the impacts of climate change that has Pinto most worried, but the alleged solutions - solutions that are being pushed forward by governments, development banks and multinational corporations around the world.

There are 192 high dams being considered for development in Pinto's small region of India.

"In the last four to five years the hydro industry has put a lot of effort into promoting hydro power as the solution to climate change," explains Aviva Imhof, Campaign Director for the International River Network. That effort is being supported by institutions like the World Bank, says Imhof, whose recent report shows that 60 per cent of the Bank's support for renewable energy and energy efficiency is in fact for big hydro projects.

Big dams are not environmentally sustainable, argues Imhof, even when considering climate change. New science is revealing that the level of greenhouse gases emitted from rotting organic matter in flooded areas is much higher than originally expected. But beyond their impacts on climate change, says Pino, these high dams will have devastating impacts on people in her region of Manipur, India.

Besides the economic and environmental cost of carting thousands of tons of materials up to remote mountain regions, once built, these dams will flood vast areas. This low-lying land, notes Pinto, is where the richest soil lies, and where people have traditionally lived and grown their food.

As it turns out, this land is also rich in something else. "We have two sites in the region in which we have very very rich uranium deposits," explains Pinto, shaking her head at the 'luck' of living in such a resource-rich region. The Uranium Development Corporation of India hopes to strip mine the deposits. "Strip mining means, like an orange you peel off the top and like a sorbet you scoop it out - we're talking about highly radioactive substances here, downstream of over 100 reservoirs, which are built on geographical faults.

That's the other thing: It's not uncommon for the region to experience more than 3 earthquakes a week above five on the Richter scale. In Manipur, the mountains are still growing.

"The Eastern Himalayas are the growing tip of a growing range of what's called fold mountains. Fold mountains are formed when the geographical plates underneath the surface of the earth bang into each other. This banging causes the skin of the earth to wrinkle and fold." This banging is what the rest of us experience as earthquakes, and these wrinkles and folds are the mountains and valleys where the dams are set to be built - along geological faults.

"We're setting ourselves up for disaster," warns Pinto. "What we're going to have, if one of these reservoir's cracks, is a massive flooding downstream. If - as is the plan - you're going to have multiple dams, one after the other, each breach is going to breach the next dam. These floods will hit the mine either on the surface or through the water table. We're looking at a scale of contamination that is probably unthinkable."

The plan is not sustainable, Pinto argues. More big dams and nuclear development will not solve climate change, but benefit those "who already have so much money they don't know what to do with it."

Pinto doesn't intend to let this happen, but she and others in her community are up against terrific odds. "We have been told categorically by the government of India - in the presense of international financing institutions and corporates - that if we do not sign off the rights of our lands for these purposes, they will be declared a national resource and put under military control." Those who agree to sign over the rights to their land will be given nominal compensation to start their lives over. "It is a a hard thing for a mother to say that 'you will kill me and my child in front of me but I will not give you this land,' when she knows he's going to take it anyway." Even so, notes Pinto, "Most people have said that they would rather be thrown off their land and killed than sign and be compensated"

The threat people face in Pinto's region is a real one. Amnesty International has urged the Indian Government to repeal or review the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. In areas declared to be 'disturbed' such as the Northeast region, the Act gives security forces powers to - among other things - use excessive force, including to shoot to kill without members of the security force lives being at imminent risk.

At least one of the proposed Manipur dams has been approved for construction by the Indian Government (the uranium mines remain in the proposal stage.) The Tipaimukh Dam will stand 162 metres and flood approximately 2500 acres of land once it's completed. Construction has been slowed due to frequent earthquakes. So far, the mountains seem to be on Pinto's side.

Hillary Lindsay investigates the human cost of a 'business as usual' approach to climate change in Northeastern India.