Category Archives: Energy

(December 11, 2002) After the most acrimonious battle with federal politicians since the National Energy Program two decades ago, Canada’s oilpatch is now preparing for life with Kyoto. But that doesn’t mean the industry likes it. The federal government passed the controversial Kyoto protocol Tuesday by a 195-77 vote in the House of Commons, committing Canada to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Continue reading →

(November 18, 2002) I have to agree with Lawrence Solomon (Relatively Safe; Absolutely Ridiculous, Nov. 13). I’m a (PhD!) professional geologist who spent many years wandering around rock formations in Saskatchewan which host uranium ore, many so radioactive to our handheld Geiger counters (scintillometers, to be technically precise) they went offscale. Back in the 1980s I was at a nuclear conference in Calgary where one of Mr. Solomon’s government experts was talking about how safe mining was and the excellent federal government safety controls. Continue reading →

(November 13, 2002) “The nuclear industry has never claimed to be ‘absolutely safe’,” says AECL PhD Jeremy Whitlock. Never? I guess no one could be that dumb, certainly no one in the worldwide nuclear industry that I wrote about last week. Continue reading →

(November 6, 2002) Nuclear power is absolutely safe, the nuclear industry is fond of saying. Only scaremongers, the ignorant and fools think otherwise, it maintains. Canadian governments have fallen for the nuclear industry’s assurances but, thankfully, Canada’s private sector lenders haven’t. Knowing that the risk of nuclear contamination is real, and that they could be on the financial hook in the event of radioactive contamination, banks and other private financiers have refused to back nuclear facilities. Continue reading →