MPs, Scientists Raise Alarm Over Climate Hype for Small Modular Reactors

Source: MPs, Scientists Raise Alarm Over Climate Hype for Small Modular Reactors

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Several Members of Parliament and activists are warning the Canadian government that its support for nuclear energy projects could prove costly and ineffective—even as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau maintains that nuclear is “on the table” for achieving the country’s climate goals.

The federal government considers nuclear energy—including small modular reactors (SMRs) that are touted as easier to build and run than traditional nuclear plants—as key to meeting energy needs while aiming for net-zero by 2050.

In Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s 2023 budget in March, investments for nuclear power and SMRs were included alongside hydropower and other “non-emitting electricity generation systems” eligible for a $25-billion, 15% tax break from the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit.

And Trudeau has since made multiple public statements in support of nuclear energy. “Nuclear is on the table, absolutely,” he said, during a speech in British Columbia earlier this month. And at a University of Ottawa visit, he said investment in nuclear and SMRs is something Canada is “very, very serious” about, reported the Canadian Press.

“We’re going to have to be doing much more nuclear over the coming decades,” Trudeau said.

But on April 25, anti-nuclear activists and a cross-partisan group of MPs held a media conference on Parliament Hill, urging Ottawa to rethink its stance on nuclear and calling the energy source a dangerous distraction from climate action, reported CBC News.

Speakers in the group said Trudeau and his cabinet are getting bad advice about nuclear energy.

“The nuclear industry, led by the United States and the United Kingdom, has been lobbying and advertising heavily in Canada, trying to convince us that new SMR designs will somehow address the climate crisis,” said Prof. Susan O’Donnell, a member of the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB). The reality, she added, is that SMRs will produce “toxic radioactive waste” and could lead to serious accidents while turning some communities into “nuclear waste dumps”.

Moreover, there is “no guarantee these nuclear experiments will ever generate electricity safely and affordably,” O’Donnell said, since SMRs are still relatively untested.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May called government funding for nuclear projects a “fraud.”

“It has no part in fighting the climate emergency,” May said. “In fact, it takes valuable dollars away from things that we know work, that can be implemented immediately, in favour of untested and dangerous technologies that will not be able to generate a single kilowatt of electricity for a decade or more.”