July 2009

The Star Phoenix July 3, 2009

Isotope option available

If Premier Brad Wall and many federal politicians would take the time to read, research and do their homework, they would arrive at a better understanding of the solution to the isotope crisis.

I must inform those endeavouring to use the isotope crisis for political gain that there's an alternative to a nuclear reactor to make isotopes.

Dr. Dale Dewar, a member of Physicians for Global Survival, says Edmonton, Hamilton, Toronto and Ottawa have created a new radioactive drug called F sodium fluoride, which helps diagnose bone cancer, bone fractures, arthritis and spinal problems. The drug is made in particle accelerators called cyclotrons.

When the Chalk River nuclear facility was first shut down, Dr. Sandy McEwan, chair of oncology at the University of Alberta, and colleagues from the university and from Alberta Health Services, began their work in 2007 with scientists and doctors in Hamilton.

The drug can be used in place of technetium and was approved on May 27 by Health Canada. The F sodium fluoride isotope produces high-quality images with positron emission tomography scanners.

I suggest politicians work toward providing universities in Saskatchewan with the necessary funding to enable them to purchase the equipment and expertise needed to promote this new technology rather than push for extremely expensive nuclear reactors.

Doris E. Lund

Prince Albert

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The Star Phoenix July 3, 2009

Tunnel vision on nuclear

Whether it is interprovincial trade or energy, Canada is one of the most Balkanized countries on the planet.

Quebec's massive hydro resources are exported to the United States market while next door, Ontario struggles with dirty coal and hugely expensive nuclear power. From Alberta, pipelines carry oil and gas cross interprovincial boundaries mainly to access the same U.S. market.

How focused this north-south axis has become was made crystal clear with the recent meeting of western premiers and U.S. governors to create a cross-border western energy corridor.

In the formative years of this country, our leaders saw the critical need of an east-west link and built the railway to do just that. It was fortunate that they did. Provincial premiers with differing political views find it feasible to ignore obvious solutions to be found within the country in favour of the plum of international visibility.

Some time ago, cabinet minister Ken Cheveldayoff announced negotiations with the Manitoba government to explore linking Saskatchewan's electrical grid to Manitoba's large resources of hydro power. Hydro power has none of the baggage of a multibillion-dollar nuclear plant whose cost alone would limit Saskatchewan government initiatives for decades to come.

Our province need not blindly copy Ontario's model. Yet that is what is proposed with the building of a nuclear power plant in Saskatchewan. The hydro option appears to have been quietly taken off the table and tunnel vision has become the way ahead.

Saskatchewan taxpayers deserve better. Give us a true cost-benefit analysis.

W.E. King

J.L. King

Saskatoon

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The Star Phoenix July 3, 2009

Nuclear short-sighted

Murray Mandryk is right to say, "The biggest favour the nuclear opponents could do for their cause is to continue to keep the focus on the needs of SaskPower, the options it has, and on the true costs of nuclear power." (Anti-nuke tactic has no sway SP, June 14.)

But any assessment of the true cost of nuclear power requires a step back from the economic discourse that dominates the discussion. Common sense suggests the nuclear option could prove to be as big a distraction to meeting our environmental and energy needs as the invasion of Iraq was to the War on Terror.

Can we afford to waste this much of our time and resources on what everyone acknowledges will be a short-term, high-cost response at best? We remember that the short-sighted push in North America to abandon rail lines in favour of the auto and big trucks was based on the naive view that oil prices would remain low forever, a view that remained intact even after the OPEC embargo in the 1970s.

And if we have yet to figure out how to deal with the pollution that comes from burning coal and oil, what makes us think the disposal of nuclear waste won't be just as intractable?

Displacing one set of energy problems for another is simply to refuse to acknowledge the environmental debt that we have been piling up for decades, a debt that is now being called in.

Tim Nickel

Saskatoon

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Submitted for publication in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix

Letter to the Editor, July 2, 2009

CNSC Protects Industry, Misinforms Canadians

Judging by his letter [Saturday, June 27] the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) thinks that shielding the nuclear industry is more important than providing accurate information to the public and to Canada’s atomic workers.

The CNSC has a responsibility to protect the health and safety of Canadians. It also has a specific legal obligation to “disseminate objective scientific information” about the nature of the risks associated with nuclear facilities.

Yet Mr. Binder grossly misrepresents the scientific findings of a 15-nation study of atomic workers by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), affiliated with the World Health Organization.

The IARC study found that chronic exposure of atomic workers to low-level radiation does cause a statistically significant increase in cancers. Moreover, the results indicate that the risk factor is about 6 times higher than previously estimated, based on the survivors of the world war 2 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Even more important is the fact that Canadian atomic workers are at much higher risk (about three times higher) than the atomic workers from other countries.

Instead of communicating this important information, Mr. Binder denies that there is any increased risk at all due to radiation exposure.

He says that atomic workers are healthier than the average Canadian. True, but every health scientist knows about the fallacy of “the healthy worker effect”. Just because workers are healthier than average, that doesn’t mean that some of them may not be suffering from industrially-induced diseases, as the IARC study convincingly documents.

Mr. Binder also implies that there is no evidence of extra risk among the general population from living in the vicinity of nuclear facilities. Yet a recent study commissioned by the German Government shows a statistically significant increase in leukemia among children under five years of age living within five kilometres of a nuclear reactor. Contrary to Mr. Binder's remarks, the authors of the study did not "rule out" radiation as a cause; they simply said that current radiation risk estimates could not account for the large amount of excess leukemia.

Perhaps if it had some health professionals on staff and were not reporting to the Minister of Natural Resources, who champions nuclear power, the CNSC might evolve into a more responsible organization -- educating the public instead of keeping them in the dark.

Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,

Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.