The federal government has thrown billions of tax dollars at failed nuclear projects, including the unsafe-to-operate Maple Reactors and the long shelved Advanced Candu.
Now Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan is touting another pie-in-the-sky nuclear technology: small nuclear reactors. There are no working prototypes of this technology in Canada and, small or large, these units will come with all the security and radioactive waste headaches of existing nuclear technology. The power they produce, according to the industry’s own studies, will also cost two to five times more than power from solar and wind.
The last thing we need in the face of our current climate crisis is to waste money and time on slow and costly solutions when renewable energy is rapidly gaining momentum worldwide.
Our new pamphlet calls on federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to do the smart thing and not waste any further tax dollars on the steadily declining nuclear industry. The federal government must focus on renewable energy as a real and ready climate solution, not empty promises from a nuclear industry that never delivers.