Canada's Need for Energy

Recently, I was invited to participate in a focus group for the Ontario Power Generation Corporation. I learned a lot and it was a great experience. The group that I was in was asked to evaluate written materials that stated the stance and advocacy positions of the OPG. Some pertained to labour and investment in the province, some to green initiatives, and some seemed like advertising copy. Nuclear and renewable energy were a big part of what we were considering in this focus group. When we evaluated the need for power, the problems of pollution, the potential need for electricity in the future, I started to wonder if nuclear power might not be the way to go.


The debate that I posted from the TED talks, below, was a thought provoking experience but it was something else that helped me decide against nuclear power. The event that solidified my thinking was the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Why?

In reality, we all participated in or allowed the exploration and capturing of oil from the ocean floor to fuel our way of life. On some level we all knew that in spite of what they said, there was no way that the oil industry could really deal with the worst case scenario but we minimized the risks. We turned into the 'see no evil' monkeys. We ignored the warnings. BP could not deal with the oil spill. It cannot now, no matter what it does, restore that part of our planet. They cannot undo the wound to the planet, to the health of the ocean and to the people who encounter it or to the local economy. They cannot unkill the dead ocean life. We need to remember that this did not just happen in and to the Gulf of Mexico. In a closed system, like the planet we live on, the ramifications are world wide. The oil industry simply played dice with our home and they lost but in the end we all lost.

It is the same with nuclear energy. We cannot, as a planet, handle the worst case scenario with nuclear power generation. If an accident occurs, the people who profit from it, will not be able to 'fix' it. People who have no part in the profit or even the benefits will play with their health or their lives. If a terrorist decides to target it, all we need is one lapse in vigilance, one human error and the corridor to destruction is opened. The facts of human nature and of a science called Human Factors argues persuasively against such eternal vigilance. We are all paying the price for the mistakes of the past in terms of cancer rates and deaths of innocents. It is time to say 'NO' to technologies and to power generation sources where we cannot handle the worst case scenarios. Especially when we have such benign sources of power waiting in the wings.

Worst case scenarios do happen on this small planet.