Not long ago the Green Party of Ontario passed a resolution stating that they would support the continued use of nuclear power. They intended to go further and support an increase in CANDU-based electricity production. 

 While many people think that nuclear got its bad rap because people in the 60s and 70s considered it to be a threat to the environment the truth is murkier as much of the scaremongering was financially supported by people that made their money out of oil.  It was competitive scaremongering cleverly hidden within the environmental movement.

One of our more active members, Ian Wigginton, and I thought that the Green Party decision was a great opportunity to raise this issue, and we produce the article that follows.  We could not get anyone to publish it but it’s worth a read,  I am sure many people will be surprised. 

Nuclear Power, now it’s Green as well as Clean

The Green Party of Ontario passed a resolution regarding nuclear power at their annual convention in Kingston recently.  It stated that they would support the continued use of nuclear power.  A second proposed resolution supporting an increase in CANDU-based electricity production was workshopped but not completed. 

Many people may be surprised by this shift, after all, nuclear power was, for a long time, an anathema to the Green movement.

But there never was any real environmental reason why it should have been and it’s not even clear why it ever was.  In the early days of nuclear power, it was supported by environmental organizations like the Sierra Club who saw the benefits of compact clean generation that might stop their environment from being destroyed by hydro dams.

Friends of the Earth was founded out of the Sierra Club largely to pursue an anti-nuclear agenda using start-up money supplied by the founder of the oil company ARCO, a conspicuous oil baron.   FoE’s anti-nuclear stance helped sustain demand for his company’s product!

The campaign was so successful that an anti-nuclear ideology came to pervade the environmental movement, and it manifested itself in an implied bias against nuclear power.  Conspicuous bias is easy to recognize and it’s unlikely that FoE gets much support from oil barons nowadays, but implied bias is insidious and hard to shift.  Despite nuclear’s contributions to clean air, reduced pollution, and healthier populations this ideology persisted.   

Ontario is now planning new nuclear power projects because it has tried everything else and found there is no way of delivering the clean reliable power we need without it.  Better late than never!  Most of the rest of the world is coming to a similar conclusion.  We could have got to this position much sooner if that implied bias had not existed.

While this resolution will not in itself change the rate of new nuclear deployment in Canada, the Green Party of Ontario is to be congratulated for breaking from the shackles of poorly informed historical ideology and focusing on the real challenges of today.   Expect other well-informed previously anti-nuclear environmental groups to follow suit.

Ian Wigginton, Co-Chair, Canadian Nuclear Society Decommissioning and Waste Management Division

Neil Alexander, Head of Communications, Canadian Nuclear Society