The Dominion - Stephen Salaff

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

Land Claims and the People of the Great River

hillarybain — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:25:21 +0000

An interview with Paula Lapierre of the Kichesipirini Algonquin Nation

Artist Paula LaPierre is a principal Sachem of the Kichesipirini Algonquin First Nation, based in Pembroke, Ontario, and serves as the First Nation’s elected representative.

LaPierre has been employed by the governments of Ontario and Canada in the delivery of social services, including employment services and the development of human resources.

LaPierre recently contributed to a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada research project with York University in Toronto, compiling and preserving oral interview information on family and lineage continuity in Aboriginal and Algonquin communities.

She has volunteered for positions on the boards of directors of Renfrew County Children’s Council, Pembroke and Area Association for Community Living and Renfrew County Children’s Mental Health Services.

LaPierre is the mother of three daughters and one son, and grandmother of five, and she is expecting two more grandchildren. In her spare time, LaPierre is writing a book on the history of Kichesipirini Algonquin First Nation and their land-base on Allumette Island.

Stephen Salaff: Paula, what is the current status of your struggle?

Paula LaPierre: Our Kichesipirini Algonquin First Nation seeks to gain full participation rights in negotiations on the Algonquin Land Claim. Representatives of Algonquin communities, Ontario and Canada are now meeting monthly to negotiate Algonquin historical and constitutional-based claims to ownership of the Ottawa River watershed in Ontario and its natural resources.

Our community name Kichesipirini means “People of the Great River.”

We are encouraged by recent statements from semi-official lawyers in Ontario that KAFN can soon anticipate a place in the Land Claim negotiation, short of a KAFN legal challenge.

We plan to act quickly to secure the substantial financial sums owed to us by the two governments for unjust denial of our participation rights until today. We will be investing these resources in community initiatives, establishment of downtown Pembroke offices and developing responsible environmental and sustainable development priorities for the Ottawa River watershed, including Pembroke.

We believe that a comparative cost analysis of the administrative expenses of running a “Reserve” versus an even larger community such as Pembroke will demonstrate that the “Reserve” system has contributed to the poverty and deprivation of registered “Indians.” At the negotiating table, we will seek improved new models of Algonquin and Aboriginal governance.

In your land claim you refer to Kichesipirini historical traditions and entitlement. Can you please describe your approach to documenting this history?

In addition to extensive genealogy and proven historical attachment to well-defined territories, I employ the “totemic” research methodology explained and illustrated by University of Toronto law professor Darlene Johnston in her recruited presentation “Great Lakes Aboriginal History in Cultural Context” to Day One of the Ipperwash Inquiry in April 2004. As an Aboriginal-origin legal scholar, Darlene argues that evidence of identity should not depend upon the language of the record-maker. Algonquin and Aboriginal history is recorded in identifying symbols that our ancestors marked on physical objects like trees, canoes, houses and clothing. When the Europeans arrived with ink and parchment, these marks were used by Algonquin and Aboriginal leaders whenever their “signature” was required. These identifying marks are called “totems,” or “dodems,” and my approach to our written history is totemic in essence.

I have learned through collection of oral histories on the continuity of family and lineage in Algonquin culture, and through written sources, including The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1959, that the Kichesipirini Algonquins once flourished on present-day Allumette Island in the Ottawa River and in nearby areas on both sides of the river.

However, the Kichesipirini Algonquins were badly decimated in conflicts brought by the French and British. From my reading and apprehension of our history, I claim that the Kichesipirini Algonquin First Nation was the victim of European-originated genocide.

Our nation is currently regrouping and re-establishing its identity. My personal identity is the symbolic crane dodem.

Our path is hindered by dismissive procedures of governments under the federal Indian Act, who prefer to “recognize” and financially support an inland “Reserve” established before 1850.

Speaking of the Ipperwash Inquiry, Peter Rosenthal, counsel for the cousins of Aboriginal activist Dudley George, who was killed on an Ipperwash community burial ground, told me recently that the Inquiry Report may appear in early 2007 and will “increase public awareness of the situation of First Nations people and will include many recommendations designed to combat racism and to treat land claims with appropriate respect.”

That sounds helpful. I believe that the family and burial ground traditions of Dudley George’s community at Ipperwash are quite similar to ours. In her evidence to the Ipperwash Inquiry, Darlene Johnston recalled French explorer Champlain’s 1613 description of a Kichesipirini Algonquin cemetery on Tesouat’s Island (present-day Morrison’s Island) in the Ottawa River. Darlene also quoted Jesuit Father Baird in Volume One of Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: “[the Algonquin people] are very reluctant to be separated from the tombs of their ancestors; their graves and cemeteries are well-marked and well-tended.”

Paula LaPierre

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.