Tag Archives: Nuclear

Cartoon by Stephanie McMillan - from her

Counting the Nuclear Fallout from Fukushima

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My partner Mike was a professor with a wealth of knowledge about all things nuclear. Of all the achievements of his long, illustrious career, there was none of which he was more proud than playing a pivotal role in keeping nuclear power out of British Columbia in the 1980s. One of the last things he wrote before his sudden death in March 2011 was a column for our local paper about the fundamental flaws in producing nuclear energy which led, inevitably, to the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.

Last month, when a 20 metre-long dry dock washed up on the shore of Oregon 15 months after being cast adrift by the Japanese tsunami, I could almost hear Mike asking: What about the invisible fallout from this disaster?

After all, even though it wasn’t reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences until May 2012, within five months of the Fukushima explosion scientists on the US Pacific coast found radioactive contamination levels ten times higher than normal in migrating bluefin tuna.    

Airborne radioactive pollution crossed the Pacific much faster than those tuna. An investigation by The Georgia Straight last year revealed efforts by Health Canada to downplay the significance of massive spikes in radiation in BC and across Canada within weeks of the Fukushima nuclear plant explosion.

By the time those radioactive tuna were turning up in California, Health Canada had already removed nine supplementary radiation monitors installed in BC and the Yukon following the Fukushima meltdown. According to their website, this was done because “radioactivity levels across Canada continue to be within normal background levels and  there is no cause for concern”.

So, we’re just getting our regular, every day, perfectly safe dose of radiation. Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? Or is it?

When their research was published in May this year, Daniel Madigan, one of the scientists who analysed those tuna, told Reuters: “I wouldn’t tell anyone what’s safe to eat or not safe. It’s become clear that some people feel any amount of radioactivity, in their minds, is bad and they’d like to avoid it. But compared to…what’s established as safety limits, it’s not a large amount at all.”

Established as safety limits, eh? Established by whom?

As Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility told The Georgia Straight last year: “The government of Canada tends to pooh-pooh the dangers of nuclear power because it is a promoter of nuclear energy and uranium sales.”

Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor emeritus of the Chicago School of Public Health, has warned: “The claim that low doses of radiation are harmless has always been just a claim.” Mike  and countless other nuclear experts (though not surprisingly none in the nuclear power industry) would agree: there is no risk-free dose of radiation.

As Anna Tilman explains in Watershed Sentinel magazine, ionizing radiation (which all radioactive material coming out of a reactor produces) is powerful enough to initiate and promote cancer. A single radionuclide can cause a lethal cancer, and damage to DNA that may be carried to future generations.

Just how much radiation is in the air you’re breathing? According to Health Canada, not enough for you to worry about.

In case you don’t believe them, you now have a chance to find out for yourself. Watershed Sentinel (in co-operation with the BC Environmental Network and a private donor) has purchased a Geiger counter. The magazine wants to put the Geiger counter on the road, sending it to communities around BC and Alberta to test for hotspots. Results will be mapped and posted on its website. Details about borrowing and operating the Geiger counter are available at sentinelhotspots.ca/hotspots/radiation.

The above cartoon was republished with permission from Stephanie McMillan – to see more of her “Code Green” cartoons, go to www.stephaniemcmillan.org/codegreen. 

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The badly damaged reactor 4 building, with its exposed spent fuel ponds, at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant

Fukushima Reactor 4: The most important story nobody’s talking about

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“It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor.”
-Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland Mitsuhei Murata to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

It’s the most important story nobody’s talking about: the continued dire situation at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, ravaged by a massive earthquake and Tsunami last March.

Judging by the official position of the Japanese Government – which maintains the worst of the catastrophe has passed, declaring the plant now “stable” – and drying up of mainstream media coverage, it’s easy to see how most of the world has been lulled into a false sense of security about Fukushima.

But in recent months, increasingly troubling reports from high-ranking Japanese and American politicians, diplomats and nuclear experts have been trickling into the blogosphere and alternate media like the irradiated water still seeping from the plant into the Pacific Ocean. They suggest, in a nutshell, that were another decent-sized earthquake to hit the stricken plant before thousands of highly radioactive spent fuel rods are properly secured, we could see the explosion and diffusion into the North Pacific’s winds and ocean currents of 10 times the radioactive material emitted by the Chernobyl disaster – rendering much of Asia, North America and many other corners of the globe uninhabitable for centuries.

No wonder no one wants to talk about this stuff! 

The force of such warnings has been muted by the fact that most of these alarms are being sounded by relatively fringe politicos and individuals associated with the anti-nuclear movement – albeit highly respected in their respective fields – and carried largely by alternate media sites.

But that has begun to change. This past week, one of Canada’s largest media outlets, CTV News, carried a story titled, “Fukushima Reactor 4 Poses Massive Global Risk”, which echoed many of the concerns being raised through other channels. If you read one depressing thing this week, make it this story.

Here’s how CTV describes the situation, citing renowned nuclear expert and activist Arnie Gundersen:

Reactor 4 – and to a lesser extent Reactor 3 – still hold large quantities of cooling waters surrounding spent nuclear fuel, all bound by a fragile concrete pool located 30 metres above the ground, and exposed to the elements. A magnitude 7 or 7.5 earthquake would likely fracture that pool, and disaster would ensue, says Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with Fairewinds Energy Education who has visited the site.

The 1,535 spent fuel rods would become exposed to the air and would likely catch fire, with the most-recently added fuel rods igniting first.

The incredible heat generated from that blaze, Gundersen said, could then ignite the older fuel in the cooling pool, causing a massive oxygen-eating radiological fire that could not be extinguished with water.

“So the fear is the newest fuel could begin to burn and then we’d have a conflagration of the whole pool because it would become hotter and hotter. The health consequences of that are beyond where science has ever gone before,” Gundersen told CTVNews.ca in an interview from his home in Vermont…

…Highly radioactive cesium and strontium isotopes would likely go airborne and “volatilize” — turning into a vapour that could move with the wind, potentially travelling thousands of kilometres from the source.

The size of those particles would determine whether they remained in Japan, or made their way to the rest of Asia and other continents.

“And here’s where there’s no science because no one’s ever dared to attempt the experiment,” Gundersen said. “If it flies far enough it goes around the world, if the particles stay a little bigger, they settle in Japan. Either is awful.”

Essentially, he said, Japan is sitting on a ticking time bomb.

Gundersen is far from the only nuclear expert or public figure who has been raising these concerns. A veteran US Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden – who recently visited Fukushima – and a couple of Japanese diplomats have also been raising alarm bells.

Reuters reported last month on Wyden’s Fukushima tour:

Japan, with assistance from the U.S. government, needs to do more to move spent fuel rods out of harm’s way at the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, said U.S. Senator Ron Wyden on Monday.

Wyden, a senior Democratic senator on the Senate Energy committee, toured the ruined Fukushima plant on April 6, and said the damage was far worse than he expected.

“Seeing the extent of the disaster first-hand during my visit conveyed the magnitude of this tragedy and the continuing risks and challenges in a way that news accounts cannot,” said Wyden in a letter to Ichiro Fujisaki, Japan’s ambassador to the United States…

…Wyden said he was most worried about spent fuel rods stored in damaged pools adjacent to the ocean, and urged the Japanese government to accept international help to prevent further release of the radioactive material if another earthquake should happen.

The senator expressed concern on his website that all that was standing between the spent fuel ponds and another Tsunami was “a small, makeshift sea wall erected out of bags of rock.” Wyden called for the spent fuel rods to be moved to safe storage sooner than the 10-year time frame laid out by the Japanese Government under its Fukushima remediation plan.

Dr. Robert Alvarez, a former top advisor at the US Department of Energy, confirmed the fears of Wyden and Gundersen when asked by Japanese diplomat Akio Matsumura to review the situation at Fukushima. Alvarez responded:

The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cesium-137 released by the Chernobyl accident. (emphasis added)

Another Japanese diplomat, former Ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal Mitsuhei Murata has also joined the chorus of concern over reactor 4, writing in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor.” (emphasis added)

Experts in communicating environmental themes to the broader public tend to stress the importance of providing people with hope and tangible actions they can take to help resolve the issue at hand. Perhaps that’s one reason I’ve resisted covering this story up until now. I confess, every time I read about the dire situation at Fukushima, I can’t help but feel depressed and powerless to affect a situation that threatens to destroy everything I hold dear: my wild salmon and marine ecosystems, my coastal home, the health and welfare of my family and community, my whole country and the very planet as I know it. If we take to heart the warnings of people like Senator Wyden, Dr. Alvarez, Ambassador Mistuhei – or even if at minimum we apply the Precautionary Principle to the situation, which seems well-warranted – then we have to acknowledge the very real possibility that nothing short of the fate of human civilization and the natural world hang on the teetering frame of Reactor 4.

Is that melodramatic? So what if these fears prove overblown in the end? This is one situation where I don’t mind being labelled a Chicken Little, for the chance that the danger was real and my actions helped in some way to mitigate it.

By all accounts, solving the problem is an extraordinary undertaking requiring enormous funding, highly specialized equipment and incomprehensible danger for the brave Japanese workers required to carry out the job. Which is why the International Community – and Ron Wyden’s own government, who have yet to act on his concerns – must heed these calls to get off their butts and start pitching in. Of course, that requires Japan’s acknowledgement of the problem and receptiveness to outside help, yet its leaders remain in full denial mode.

The combination of the scale of this looming disaster – which is beyond anything contemplated by humanity since the Cuban Missile crisis – the relative lack of profile and perceived collective credibility of the small number of messengers bearing these unwelcome tidings to date (though these are some highly credible people), and the lack of coverage by the mainstream media have all contributed to the paralysis currently afflicting the powers that be vis-a-vis Fukushima.

Yet, just today, the Wall Street Journal too chimed in on the emerging story. While the brief article, titled, “Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit 4 Spent-Fuel Pool: Safe or Not?”, presents the official line parroted by Japanese vice-minister for reconstruction, Ikko Nakatsuka – namely, that recent efforts to fortify reactor 4 have rendered it relatively safe – the paper retained some healthy skepticism, concluding: “But just how big an earthquake could Unit 4 withstand before it collapses? That’s one of many questions from reporters that Mr. Nakatsuka and the head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency’s seismic safety unit evaded or wouldn’t answer.”

Thanks to the efforts of the above politicians and nuclear experts, the story is beginning to break through in the mainstream media, forcing the Japanese at least to appear to step up their efforts. What is required now is for this issue to gain enough prominence in the mainstream media and, consequently, the public consciousness, to compel a unified political effort to move those bloody fuel rods to safety before another earthquake topples them and takes us all with them.

It is my hope, in talking about this thing no one wants to contemplate, that I’m doing my small part in inching the world closer to the action necessary to avert a crisis of unthinkable proportions. And perhaps if you take a moment to share this story and others you come across with your social media network, friends, colleagues and family – and write your political representatives and media – we can help build the movement required to keep our air and water clean, our children’s future preserved.

I’m all for prayer in these situations…but action’s preferable.

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CTV Reports on Fukushima’s Dire State: “Fate of the World Depends on Reactor 4”

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Read this important story from CTV.ca on the ongoing perilous situation at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant – where the containment of highly radioactive spent fuel rods hangs on two badly structurally damaged buildings susceptible to collapse from another earthquake, carrying potentially unthinkable consequences for much of the world. (May 19, 2012)

More than a year after a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a massive nuclear disaster, experts are warning that Japan isn’t out of the woods yet and the worst nuclear storm the world has ever seen could be just one earthquake away from reality.

The troubled Reactor 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is at the centre of this potential catastrophe.

Reactor 4 — and to a lesser extent Reactor 3 — still hold large quantities of cooling waters surrounding spent nuclear fuel, all bound by a fragile concrete pool located 30 metres above the ground, and exposed to the elements.

A magnitude 7 or 7.5 earthquake would likely fracture that pool, and disaster would ensue, says Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with Fairewinds Energy Education who has visited the site.

The 1,535 spent fuel rods would become exposed to the air and would likely catch fire, with the most-recently added fuel rods igniting first.

The incredible heat generated from that blaze, Gundersen said, could then ignite the older fuel in the cooling pool, causing a massive oxygen-eating radiological fire that could not be extinguished with water.

“So the fear is the newest fuel could begin to burn and then we’d have a conflagration of the whole pool because it would become hotter and hotter. The health consequences of that are beyond where science has ever gone before,” Gundersen told CTVNews.ca in an interview from his home in Vermont.

Worst-case scenario

There are a couple of possible outcomes, Gundersen said.

Highly radioactive cesium and strontium isotopes would likely go airborne and “volatilize” — turning into a vapour that could move with the wind, potentially travelling thousands of kilometres from the source.

The size of those particles would determine whether they remained in Japan, or made their way to the rest of Asia and other continents.

“And here’s where there’s no science because no one’s ever dared to attempt the experiment,” Gundersen said. “If it flies far enough it goes around the world, if the particles stay a little bigger, they settle in Japan. Either is awful.”

Essentially, he said, Japan is sitting on a ticking time bomb.

The damaged Reactor 4 cooling pool was reinforced by workers who went in and “jury-rigged” it after the tsunami, but the structure still contains a massive amount of fuel, Gundersen said.

Reactor 3 has less fuel inside its cooling pool, but it has not been strengthened since the disaster and poses a greater risk of failing.

“Reactor 3 has a little less consequences but a little more risk, and Reactor 4 has more consequences but…a little less risk,” he said.

Finding a fix

The solution, Gundersen said, is for the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to immediately begin the process of transferring the fuel rods from the cooling pools to dry cask storage — a massive and costly endeavour, but one he said is absolutely essential.

To even begin the removal process at Reactor 4, TEPCO would first have to construct a crane capable of lifting the 100-tonne fuel rod canister, since the original crane was destroyed in the disaster last year.

In order to do that, they would have to build a massive structure around the existing pool to support the new crane, which would then be used to lift the fuel rod canister from the water, down to the ground and into a steel and concrete dry-cask.

All this of course, has to be done in a highly contaminated area where workers must wear protective suits and limit their radiation exposure each day, adding time and expense to the process.

Still, with the consequences so high, Gundersen said there’s no time to lose.

“This is a ‘now’ problem, this is not a ‘let’s-wait-until-we-get-the-cash-flow-from-the-Japanese-government’ problem. The consequences of a 7 or 7.5 earthquake don’t happen every day, but we know it happened last year so you have to anticipate that it will happen,” Gundersen said.

‘Fate of the world’ depends on Reactor 4

He’s not alone in pressing the Japanese government to adopt a sense of urgency about the Reactor 4 dilemma.

Robert Alvarez, a former top adviser at the U.S. Department of Energy, also expressed concern in a letter to Akio Matsumura, a Japanese diplomat who has turned his focus to the nuclear calamity.  

Matsumura had asked Alvarez about the risk associated with Reactor 4.

“The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements,” Alvarez said in his response. “If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cesium-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.”

Mitsuhei Murata, Japan’s former ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal, has also made it his mission to convince the UN and the world that urgent action is needed.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No. 4 reactor,” Murata said in a recent letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in which he urged him to back efforts to address the problem.

Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said most major threats have been eliminated and “cold shutdown” status had been achieved in December.

But Noda declined to comment directly on the risk posed by Reactor 4, only telling The Wall Street Journal’s Asia edition that it was important to “remain vigilant.”

“We have passed a situation where people have to run far away or evacuate,” he said. “Ahead of us are time-consuming tasks like decontamination and decommissioning (of the plants). We will proceed with the utmost care.”

Gundersen said the remaining challenges at the Fukushima Da-Ichi site are not technological. Everyone knows what needs to be done and how to do it, he said. The challenge lies, rather, in convincing Japan that action must be taken now.

That will require international pressure, as well as international investment, on a grand scale, he said.

“We’re all in a situation of having to pray there’s not an earthquake. And there’s the other half of that, which is pray to God but row toward shore. And Tokyo’s not really rowing toward shore right now,” Gundersen said.

 

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Fukushima Radiation Found in Kelp on California Coast

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Read this article from the LA Times (published here on the Seattle Times website) on a newly published study that found radioactive particles in sea kelp off the coast of California following the meltdown of several nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan last year. (April 9, 2012)

LOS ANGELES — Radioactive particles released in the nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami were detected in giant kelp along the California coast, according to a recently published study.

Radioactive iodine was found in samples collected from beds of kelp in locations along the coast from Laguna Beach to as far north as Santa Cruz about a month after the explosion, according to the study by two marine biologists at California State University, Long Beach.

The levels, while most likely not harmful to humans, were significantly higher than measurements prior to the explosion and comparable to those found in British Columbia, Canada, and northern Washington state after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, according to the study published in March in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Giant kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera, is a particularly good measure of radioactive material in the environment because it accumulates iodine, researchers said. They wrote that radioactive particles released into the atmosphere, in particular radioactive isotope iodine 131, made its way across the Pacific, then was likely deposited into the ocean during a period of significant rain shortly after the meltdown in Japan.

The highest levels were found in Corona del Mar in Orange County. Researchers wrote that the levels were probably highest there because the kelp is also exposed to urban runoff, which may have increased the amount of rainfall it received.

The study’s authors said that while the effect of radioactive material in kelp is not well known, it would have been consumed by organisms that feed on the kelp such as sea urchins or crustaceans. Certain species of fish, including opaleye, halfmoon or senorita may be particularly affected because their endocrine systems contain iodine, according to researchers.

“Radioactivity is taken up by the kelp and anything that feeds on the kelp will be exposed to this also,” Steven Manley, the study’s lead author, said in a statement released by the university. “It enters the coastal food web and gets dispersed over a variety of organisms. … It’s not a good thing, but whether it actually has a measurable detrimental effect is beyond my expertise.”

The researchers also analyzed kelp from Sitka, Alaska, for comparison, but did not find radioactivity. The kelp there may not have been exposed to the same degree because of atmospheric patterns.

Read original article: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017944368_japankelp10.html

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Radiation at Damaged Fukushima Reactor Still “Fatally High”, New Tests Show

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Read this story from Al-Jazeera on troubling new test data from the damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan, indicating much higher levels of radiation and lower levels of cooling water than expected. (March 28, 2012)

One of Japan’s crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and much less water to cool it than officials had estimated, according to an internal examination that renews doubts about the plant’s stability.

A tool equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a dosimeter and a water gauge was used to assess damage inside the containment chamber of Fukushima Daiichi plant’s number 2 reactor for the second time since the tsunami swept into the complex more than a year ago.

The data collected on Tuesday showed the damage from the disaster is so severe that the plant operator will have to develop special equipment and technology to tolerate the harsh environment and decommission the plant. The process is expected to last decades.

The other two reactors that had meltdowns could be in even worse shape. The number 2 reactor is the only one officials have been able to closely examine so far.

‘Dangerously high’ radiation

Tuesday’s examination with an industrial endoscope detected radiation levels up to 10 times the fatal dose inside the chamber. Plant officials previously said more than half of the melted fuel had breached the core and dropped to the floor of the primary containment vessel, some of it splashing against the wall or the floor.

Particles from melted fuel have likely been responsible for sending radiation levels up to a dangerously high 70 sieverts per hour inside the container, said Junichi Matsumoto, spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Company.

The figure far exceeds the highest level previously detected, 10 sieverts per hour, which was detected around an exhaust duct shared by number 1 and 2 units last year.

“It’s extremely high,” he said, adding that an endoscope would last only 14 hours in those conditions. “We have to develop equipment that can tolerate high radiation” when locating and removing melted fuel during the decommissioning.

The probe also found that the containment vessel, a beaker-shaped container enclosing the core, had cooling water up to only 60 centimeters from the bottom, far below the 10 metres estimated when the government declared the plant stable in December. The plant is continuing to pump water into the reactor.

Video footage taken by the probe showed the water inside was clear but contained dark yellow sediments, believed to be fragments of rust, paint that had been peeled off or dust.

Three Daiichi reactors had meltdowns, but the number 2 reactor is the only one that has been examined because radiation levels inside the reactor building are relatively low and its container is designed with a convenient slot to send in the endoscope.

The exact conditions of the other two reactors, where hydrogen explosions damaged their buildings, are still unknown.

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/03/2012328112051435937.html

 

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A Tale of Two BC Mining Fiascos

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There are two mining stories out of last week in Lotusland.

For openers, let’s deal with “Prosperity” Lake which, before the corporate flacks got involved, was called Fish Lake.
 
The short story is that this is a mine prospect held by Taseko Mines. While the Provincial government approved it, it was turned down by the feds who then gave the company time to put in a new proposal, which they did. With the speed of light the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency received the new application last February and hasn’t yet decided anything. This delay brought a fire and brimstone editorial from the Fraser Institute’s house paper, the Vancouver Sun, which threw unsourced “facts” at us, including a promise of 71,000 jobs with 5,400 new residents for the nearby town of Williams Lake. We’re not told where those figures come from but clearly they’re from the large sack of extravagant statements the Fraser Institute keeps on hand for whenever their definition of capitalism is called to account.
 
Since the Sun doesn’t state otherwise, we must assume that the 71,000 jobs are for construction of the mine, which is preposterous. Whatever jobs it does take will, based upon long experience, come from outside the province. And are these 5,400 new arrivals necessary to run a mine?
 
Mr. Mihlar, the Fraser Institute’s editor of The Sun, the think tank’s poodle, should visit an operation of a modern, computerized mine before throwing numbers around.
 
A neat line in the editorial refers to outside agitators, I can only hope that I and fellow environmentalists are amongst them. The thought that environmentalists are outside agitators brings a sense of deep pride; how rewarding it is to be compared to the “freedom fighters” in the American South in the Sixties.
 
It’s so much like the Fraser Institute’ poodle, the Sun, to pretend they are not “outside agitators”.
 
The Sun’s call for putting the Taseko Prosperity Mine on the fast track is code for “approve at once” and ignores the fact that First Nations people and we outside agitators have yet to be heard from on the new proposition.
 
If I were able to cross-examine the company and their flacks my question would be: Why didn’t you submit your amended proposal in the first place? (The proposal existed, in fact, but the company insisted it wasn’t “economically viable”, before suddenly changing its tune the day after the first proposal was rejected). Can we assume that if you’re turned down for proposal #2, you have “proposition 3” in your ass pocket?
 
It’s interesting that Mr. Milhar doesn’t deal with the environmental concerns that remain, with attention be paid to the threats of damage to other waters especially to migrating salmon streams. Even though the company’s latest proposal seeks to avoid destroying Fish Lake, it still threatens Fish Creek, Taseko Lake and the Taseko River – important salmon habitat that eventually connects with the Fraser River.
 
It’s also interesting that the Fraser Institute/Sun combination believes that where development and the environment clash development must carry the day.
 
This infomercial of Mr. Milhar should help us start the great debate, namely, what do British Columbians want to be – one of the blessed lands where commercial intrusion is secondary to environmental preservation or a place where when a conflict occurs, industry holds all the trumps?
 
Then there’s the Boss Power case – a uranium property which has cost the taxpayers $30 million to settle. If the Liberals had continued the no uranium policy brought into force by the excellent Environment Minister in 1979 (name provided upon demand) this issue would not have come up.
 
As Mike Smyth of the Province stated in a column last week, this case has the same stench the BC Rail case had – gross negligence of staggering proportions that, as with the BC Rail case, best not let a judge with an open courtroom sniff around.
 
There is another angle to this story not given sufficient attention.
 
First a bit of background.
 
Ministers have the right to have their policies implemented by the public servants however much they may not want to; what ministers cannot do is interfere with a public servant who’s doing as a statute compels him to do. Registrars under various different statutes are usually under a statute which sets the rules he must administer – he has no options.
 
For a minister to try to influence the administration of a statutory obligation would, in a decent government, be forced to resign.  
 
In this case the company was making an application to The Chief Inspector of Mines for a permit to drill. The chief inspector has a statutory obligation to receive and pass judgments – ministerial interference is highly improper.
 
The then Minister of Mines, Kevin Krueger, instructed the Inspector to ignore the company’s application to drill. This is so improper that the minister should have resigned or, failing that, been fired forthwith.
 
What this case shows is that the Campbell/Clark government has the morality of an alley cat (with apologies to the feline community). Read alongside the BC Rail cover-up we see tawdry, sloppy ministers with no clue about what ministerial impropriety means and with a contempt for process an integral part of their modus operandi.
 
These two stories, read together, show an alarming disinterest in real values and respect for the public’s right to know the facts and the ability to be heard. The Vancouver Sun editorial, when you think on it, takes the breath away – process means let’s get on with it! Corporation “facts” must be considered holy writ and the process an ill-disguised sham – a quick, pro forma minor nuisance.
 
British Columbians must decide what sort of place they and what values they hold. And since the next major decisions will be pipelines and tankers, the sooner the better.

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Mike Smyth Rips Liberals’ $30 Million in Hush Money to Uranimum Mining Company

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Read this editorial from Mike Smyth in The Province, condemning the BC Liberals’ decision to pay a mining company $30 million for illegally burying its application to min uranium in BC.

“Compensating a mining company for expropriation of their mineral
rights is not unusual. The question here is whether B.C. taxpayers were
burned for an extraordinarily large amount because the government broke
the law in dealing with the company, and the government didn’t want its
dirty-laundry hamper being tipped over in court.

In a case like
this a mining company would normally be compensated for its “sunk costs”
– the amount of money it had spent on its mineral claim. It’s estimated
Boss Power spent less than $5 million trying to develop the uranium
deposit. Now the government is refusing to release internal legal documents showing how the $30-million figure was arrived at. I didn’t think anything could stink worse than the B.C. Rail plea bargain. This one comes close. And the stench is still rising.” (Oct. 25, 2011)

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Shades of Green – Don’t worry, Be Happy

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“Don’t worry, be happy” is the refuge of the deceived and the oblivious, the
attitude that people assume when they fail to recognize the reality of their
situation.

“Trust us,” says our federal government. “We are planning the future of all Canadians so we care about the environment.” Meanwhile, it subverts international agreements on greenhouse gas emissions, assiduously avoids discussion of any environmental issues, silences scientists in its employ, eliminates hundreds of them in a budget cutting program, and inflicts a 43 percent funding cut to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, one of the rare federal bodies that stands between responsible development and ecological havoc.

“Trust us,” says our BC government. “We will protect the environment and subject all projects to rigorous environmental examination. Since we are the custodians of the land, water and air, we will ensure that no damage occurs to the ecologies that sustain us all.” Meanwhile, BC’s Auditor General, John Doyle, issues a scathing report about the abject failure of the BC Environmental Assessment Office to monitor and enforce the few regulations it is assertive enough to require.

“Trust us,” say the corporations, “we will look after you with jobs and prosperity. We will protect your environment and your future.” Indeed. The salmon farming industry respects BC’s pristine West Coast so much that they use our waters as a dump for the sewage from their open net-pens, and they honour the natural ecology so much that they scare away marine mammals and expose wild salmon to the plague of farm-source sea lice and diseases. Enbridge is so protective of BC’s wilderness that it is willing to build a 1,172 km oil pipeline that will inevitably release oil into our pure rivers and lure the offshore tankers that will inevitably spill oil into our coastal treasure.

“Don’t worry, be happy” is the implicit message from our governments and corporations, working together to bring us a prosperous future. “We are in control, we know what we are doing,” they contend. “Together we will lead you to a Promised Land of endless prospects and great profits. The tomorrows will always be better than the todays if you will follow our course of progress, believe in the rewards of perpetual growth and suppress the urge to be doubtful and critical. Remember that environmental concerns are impediments to the glorious destiny that awaits us all.”

Maybe modern Germans have an insight we should pause to reflect upon. In an time of unparalleled national prosperity, they are in a funk. Notes Stephan Grunewald, a Cologne-based psychologist, “The Germans have at the moment a mood, a feeling that things can go to pieces, a feeling of being in a situation in which one is completely incapable of action” (Globe & Mail, June 25/11). This feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, this angst in a time of plenty, is a curious paradox rooted deeply in an undifferentiated anxiety. “People no longer believe in this culture of accumulation, they no longer believe in growth…. Nuclear power, speculation, Greece, these all strengthen their feeling that things cannot go on like this. There is a kind of vacuum of meaning” (Ibid.).

Nuclear power is not a British Columbian or a Canadian issue – although the Canadian government has recently divested itself of the Atomic Energy Canada Limited. Neither is the financial situation in Greece. But European and American monetary issues do trouble Canadians because the entire world is financially interconnected. And we have our own disquieting issues – nationally, provincially and locally – that we are not confronting honestly, openly and sensibly. A summer of record heat and rain, of storms and flooding don’t seem to have budged the delusion that all is normal with our planet’s weather – in just one province, Manitoba, fires have caused $700 million in damages and floods have inflicted $2.5 billion in crop losses. “Don’t worry, be happy” is an obliviousness that must eventually awaken to reality, just as local communities must awaken to the reality of stuffed landfills, polluting mines, old-growth logging, threatened wild salmon and badly supervised fish farms.

The German epiphany, an awakening we need here before we lead our communities, province and country into China’s ecological mess, is that the freeway of perpetual growth leads to a chasm without a bridge. Everything is getting bigger, faster, more complicated – and worse. “Don’t worry, be happy” is the illusion of well
being propagated by our governments and businesses, the engineered psychology of avoidance which doesn’t want anyone to notice that key elements of Earth’s ecology are rapidly degrading, unraveling or collapsing. The signs have already entered our consciousness if only we were attentive enough to heed them. A few glib lines in a Maclean’s article about colonizing space with bacteria to ensure the continued existence of life in the universe is a clue. “The world is doomed. Even if we avoid annihilation by climate change or nuclear holocaust, the inevitable expansion of the sun will surely do us in” (Maclean’s, July 25/11).

The sun’s threat is not likely to materialize for about 500 million years. But a nuclear holocaust could be as immediate as tomorrow. And a world doomed by climate change is within a few decades of near inevitability. Would massive species extinction or acetic and dead oceans garner any more attention? Shouldn’t the mere hint of any such threats elicit a panic alert and a reflexive cold sweat of fear in anyone conscious enough to register the meaning? Wouldn’t the normal and sane response be spontaneous riots in the streets and frantic marches to the seats of government to counter such a course of madness?

Unless, of course, “Don’t worry, be happy” has created its charm of indifference and cast the spell of numbness that treats impending environmental catastrophes as casually as any two-for-one sale or discontinued fashion line. The result is a tragic reversal that has inflated the trivial and trivialized the momentous.

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