Green Party, Green Power!
No to Nuclear, Go with Green!
We can meet the province’s energy needs with simple, clean, and affordable power instead of using expensive and dangerous technology to produce more than we need. The Green Party of Saskatchewan opposes plans for building a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan and for turning the North into a nuclear fuel waste dump.
The Green Party of Saskatchewan is calling upon the Government of Saskatchewan to immediately fund, and make public, independent studies into the health and public safety risks and the environmental impact of nuclear power and uranium mining, and we join the people of Saskatchewan in calling for full feasibility studies into energy conservation and renewable energy technologies before any decision on the energy future of Saskatchewan is made.
- Nuclear power is fiscally unsound. The last nuclear power plant in Canada came in seven times over budget, costing 14 BILLION dollars. This does not include the costs that will be involved in decommissioning the plant.
- Nuclear waste cannot be stored, treated, or disposed of safely and remains toxic for hundreds of thousands of years.
- A large amount of radioactive tailings accumulate as a result of uranium mining. These tailings can leak into groundwater and affect the surrounding area, leading to increased cancer rates.
- Depleted uranium ends up in weapons such as missiles and armor piercing rounds.
- Nuclear power is NOT emissions free. Large quantities of greenhouse gases are produced in the mining and refining of uranium as well as during the long construction period of a power plant
The Green Party believes that energy choices should be economically rational!
The best energy choices to respond to the climate crisis should be those that deliver the greatest reduction of GHG per dollar invested. By this criterion, nuclear energy is among the very worst options. Reactors cost billions of dollars, take more than a decade to build, operate unreliably after the first dozen yeras, and only produce one type of energy: electricity. Even if the industry were “green and clean” as claimed by pro-nuclear propaganda efforts, it fails on the economics. Nevertheless, it is neither clean nor green.
Green Party of Saskatchewan MLAs will:
- Push for an extensive energy conservation program and the creation and implementation of alternative methods of energy production
- Advocate that SaskPower pay for all excess power production produced by private citizens, corporations, or co-operatives from renewable sources. The rate of reimbursement to be at least the same as the commercial rate charged by non-renewable energy sources such as coal
- End subsidies to all established non-renewable energy industries, and transfer these funds to subsidize the purchase and development of renewable energy production by both small and large-scale producers
- Ensure the development of a province wide Smart Grid to increase the efficiency of power transmission and take advantage of increased renewable energy production
- Introduce legislation to ensure that all new houses and housing developments be designed to take advantage of Saskatchewan’s abundant passive solar potential, including mandatory installation of solar hot water heaters, solar air heaters, and hot water heat recovery systems. And push for mandatory installation of digital electrical control panels (ie. a Green Switch) that readily shows individual energy consumption as well as gives the ability to easily turn off all unnecessary power drains in new homes. Green MLAs will also work for the development of a program to retrofit all existing houses in Saskatchewan with such devices.
Spending billions of dollars on costly nuclear power would rob Saskatchewan of the chance to go green with clean and safe energy through increased energy conservation and renewable energy technologies. We only get one chance to fight climate change. We must not miss this chance to go green, and to focus on renewables!