(1) NOVEMBER 30TH DECISION BY EXPERT REVIEW PANEL IS ABOUT GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR THE NUCLEAR/URANIUM INDUSTRY. IT IS NOT ABOUT “MEDICAL ISOTOPES”.
The decision from the Expert Review Panel (scheduled for Monday November 30, 2009) to determine who will receive our tax dollars is understood IN CONTEXT. It is not about radioactive isotope production for our health and prosperity.
The Federal Government puts up money for medical isotope production. In this example, the University jointly with the Government of Saskatchewan (Crown Investments Corporation) applies for the money.
Premier Brad Wall spelt out in March 2008: (http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=eb5b2b4d-77d3-41d1-b060-18c6c9ca9c44 ; copied at http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=6340):
“Premier Brad Wall said Thursday he envisions an ambitious project involving the federal government, SaskPower and one of the uranium companies located in the province that would see Saskatchewan playing a lead role in the research and development of nuclear power.
Speaking to reporters, Wall said he had a lengthy discussion with Stephen Harper when the prime minister was in Saskatchewan this week about a federal investment in the province involving the nuclear industry.
The premier said it’s linked to the Conservative government’s recent budget commitment of $300 million to the federal Crown Corporation Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., in part for its development of the next generation Canadian nuclear reactor.
“What we’ve simply said to the federal government is that if they’re looking to develop a new generation of reactor technology and are prepared to invest in that as a federal government, perhaps there is a P3 (public-private partnership) opportunity here between two levels of government. We have a Crown-owned electrical utility, the federal government and uranium companies that might be interested that are located here,” said Wall.”
It’s a concern for all Canadians because you (we) are the enablers, the funders. We will be funding more than an “isotope” project and will continue paying in more than one way. Do you want to do that? Make a conscious decision because it’s critical to our longterm well-being.
Piece together the information in the public record. In this radioactive isotopes example we need to understand how things COULD come together, if we don’t connect to broaden our community. You will see from the CHRONOLOGY in the next posting that the issue is no small matter.
Many thanks to Doug for the analogy of the salesman. The salesman gets his foot-in-the-door with a “reactor for medical isotopes”. By the time he leaves we’re signed up for very expensive power production and transmission lines, taking all his decades of accumulated waste from the whole continent, paying his research and development costs.
. . . man! He’s the guy who moves in and leaves you thoroughly bankrupt in the end. And what matter?! He’s been sucking you dry and padding his bank account all the while.
The evidence in the public record on the nuclear/uranium question is pretty clear. Here in Saskatchewan it is nothing more than a replay of the hog barns. Or a replay of Canada selling asbestos to third world countries when we’re spending a fortune pulling it out of buildings here because of its known health hazards. (Stephen Harper selling reactors and the building blocks for nuclear bombs to India, etc.)
There is betrayal of us by some people at the University and by some officials in Government. .. No!
It is betrayal of ourselves by ourselves. For can you tell me one thing that prevents us from reading, from reflecting, from understanding, from talking with each other, from small actions to make it right, as simple as talking and sharing information with other people?
It is our choice to be victimized or not to be victims. It takes effort, hard work not to play the victim role.
So here we go again with the nuclear industry.
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(2) FIT THE PIECES TOGETHER. EQUATIONS.
The “pieces” that create the larger picture of what is happening are in the chronology (see the next posting). The public record from which “the pieces” are taken follows the chronology, in case you think I’m dreaming. Space dictates that not everything be included!
I fit the pieces together using equations which is kind of fun. You can add your own:
If you read the Government’s UDP (Uranium Development Partnership) plan you find a set of operations.
If you read about the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Nuclear Studies Centre you find a set of operations.
The UDP plan and the Canadian Nuclear Studies Centre happen to have the same set of operations, expressed as:
UDP PLAN: Nuclear power production + radioactive waste disposal + exploration and mining =
CANADIAN NUCLEAR STUDIES CENTRE: Nuclear power production + radioactive waste disposal + exploration and mining
Which reduces to:
Govt UDP plan = U of S Nuclear Studies Centre
All of which, of course, is equal to the Nuclear/uranium corporations’ plans, so we have:
Government = University = Nuclear/uranium Corporate plans
The Government Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) Panel recommended that Saskatchewan develop nuclear power and create a nuclear waste dump. The Report says: “the economics of a stand-alone isotope reactor are not attractive”
Equation for this: radioactive isotopes = zero
a reactor to do research and development that “is synergetic” with the larger nuclear expansion plan “may also be used to produce medical isotopes…to partly offset the cost of developing and operating the reactor.”
It suggests this “could justify further funding from federal authorities.”
(radioactive isotopes = red herring ??)
The University and the Government of Saskatchewan applied for federal funding under a call for interest by the Federal Government. This was after Brad Wall and Stephen Harper had a lengthy discussion.
The equation becomes:
Federal Govt = Govt of Sask UDP plan = U of S Nuclear Studies Centre = Nuclear/uranium Corporate plans
The Federal Govt call for interest, as presented, is in the PRODUCTION OF RADIOACTIVE ISOTOPES.
But the application from the University and the Government of Sask is:
“recommending establishing a national nuclear studies centre of excellence at the university. .. will include building a nuclear research reactor for both isotope production and neutron science.” “Targets 2016 for reactor to be online”
The equation for this would be:
Radio isotopes IS NOT EQUAL TO radio isotopes because they really are zero or insignificant.
So, to maintain the equation, subtract radio isotopes from both sides:
Federal Money (minus radio isotopes) = U of S Nuclear Studies Centre = Radio isotopes + Nuclear power production + radioactive waste disposal + exploration and mining (minus radio isotopes) which reduces to:
Federal Money = U of S Nuclear Studies Centre = Nuclear/uranium Corporate interest. Let’s just cut the B.S.
The Nuclear/uranium corporations’ plans are being put into operation through the University, with no regard to the emphatic “no” stated through the public consultation process.
We’re paying for it, and in ways that most tax-payers don’t know about. (See Howard Woodhouse’s “Selling Out, Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market”, page 165, for the amount of Canadian tax-payers’ money that goes into the corporate coffers through the University. Corporate donations to the University are paltry in comparison; it is a cheap selling off of the public interest at the University to corporate, privatized profits.)
So the University and the Government of Saskatchewan (through the Crown Investments Corporation – – oh oh! another whiff of hogs) applied to get a whack of Federal Government money. The decision of the Expert Panel that decides the appropriation of the money, is to be known on November 30th.
There are numerous other equations. They add in the U.S. Department of Energy and their “National Laboratories” with focus on nuclear energy and its soulmate tar sands.
You will see the actualized “integration” (takeover), the “SPP” agenda, in the following information. As pointed out, it is information from the public record, nothing I have imagined.
In the meantime, the Salesmen for the Industry, Stephen Harper and Brad Wall, are off selling – Harper in India and Wall in Washington as you will see.
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3) BEFORE GETTING INTO THE DISCUSSION, UNDERSTAND “SMALL REACTORS”
Toshiba (Japan) in conjunction with Westinghouse is developing “small” nuclear reactor technology.
Hyperion is a U.S. corporation that is doing the same thing. By googling “small reactors” you will see mining companies’ (including uranium and tar sands) interest in “small” nuclear reactors and the progress of the nuclear industry in getting them licensed. The following article makes clear the need of the oil and gas corporations for small reactors in the tar sands. “It was really created .. for the tar sands.”
When Brad Wall talks about “small research reactors”, I believe he is talking about “research in small reactors”. There is a difference. When the University and the Government (through Crown Investments Corporation) make an application to Stephen Harper (August 2009) for a small reactor that is to be online by 2016, common sense tells me that they can’t develop a small reactor by 2016. They will be importing and modifying the Hyperion small reactor (see the following news article).
The agreements of both the Governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan with the Idaho National Laboratory (a nuclear laboratory), “the marriage made in heaven”, the inclusion of the Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee in the decision on Canadian Federal Government funding that is due November 30th are important to understanding the bigger picture. The national laboratories are part of the U.S. Department of Energy. More on those agreements later.
THE NEWS ARTICLE ON “SMALL REACTORS”:
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/561553
Jan 5, 2009, EXCERPT:
Hyperion Power Generation Inc. has developed a garden shed-sized nuclear reactor . . .
Hyperion, which calls its reactor as a “nuclear battery,” licensed the technology from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It plans to sell the reactor for about $30 million (U.S.) and says there’s potential to sell 4,000 of them around the world by 2025. . . .
The idea is that oil-sands developers, which rely heavily on electricity and steam to mine and upgrade bitumen, could purchase and operate their own Hyperion nuclear reactors as a way to virtually eliminate their controversial dependence on natural gas – that is, the use of a relatively “clean” fossil fuel as a way to extract and process one of the dirtiest fossil fuels.
“It was really created for the Alberta (INSERT: and Saskatchewan) tar sands… we have strong interest there,” says Deborah Blackwell, vice-president of licensing and public affairs at Hyperion. “
Okay, knowing about “small reactors” we can move on to the CHRONOLOGY, but after a couple brief reminders.
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(4) REMEMBER THE KILLING OF THE NORTH, IT IS PART OF THE CONTEXT
The nuclear reactors (whether at the University of Saskatchewan or elsewhere in Alberta) are for tar sands expansion and privatization of electricity.
We pay the big costs: the acidification (slow death) of northern Saskatchewan from acid rain (sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide from tar sands), the high power transmission lines that will take a portion of the electricity to lucrative markets in the western U.S. where hydro-electric capability has a 50/50 chance of being gone by 2017 because the water resource in the Colorado River is being depleted without conscience.
They run around the globe exploiting other people’s water supplies, clean air and natural resources. They leave when the destruction is complete. That is well documented and also part of the context in which this Federal money for “isotope reactors” falls.
We just happen to be next in line.
To understand what is happening in Canada (the “petro-state” or appropriation of resources) (not bombs as in Iraq) it would be very helpful to re-introduce the word “quisling” into our vocabulary.
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(5) BRUCE POWER’S ROLE SPELLED OUT
This is part of the “how” and knowing the actors.
(From item #7, “BRAD WALL SAYS HE HAS BIG PLANS FOR NUCLEAR POWER IN SASKATCHEWAN, MARCH 2008”)
“ . . . Cameco spokesman Lyle Krahn said the company is expanding its operations in uranium refining and enrichment.
However, the company’s involvement with nuclear generation is through Bruce Power, a consortium in which it is a partner. Bruce Power uses AECL’s Candu technology for its reactors.
“The premier is certainly supportive of our industry and he’s looking for opportunities,” said Krahn when told of Wall’s comments.
“From our perspective … we would use Bruce Power as the vehicle for investment in nuclear power generation in Canada.”
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The next posting contains the CHRONOLOGY.