I recently took part in a focus group discussing various aspect of electricity service in Newfoundland and Labrador. We looked at some fairly innocuous questions such as cost, value for money, maintenance or improvement of infrastructure, and so on. Many of the participants, including me, strayed from the intended pathway by introducing the issue of Muskrat Falls, but the moderator always dragged us back to the rather mundane list of prepared questions. We were there for two hours, but it was clear to me that a discussion or debate on Muskrat Falls alone would have taken up twice that time.

Now I don't intend going over what has already been said on that matter. Instead I want to raise a different aspect of the generation of electricity: the use of nuclear power. Until recently I was totally and absolutely opposed to the use of nuclear fission for this purpose. The examples of Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukiyama were enough to convince me that the dangers associated with the operation of nuclear reactors, and the intractable problem of the disposal of spent nuclear fuel, far outweigh any potential benefits in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Certainly, the cost of building and maintaining such reactors seem to lead to higher prices for the consumer. And those price increases have been mitigated by enormous government subsidies which, by sleight of hand, have been disguised as not coming from the pockets of taxpayers.

So what changed my mind? I came across an article on a blog called Brave New Climate (http://bravenewclimate.com) and read an item on Internal Fast Reactors (IFR). I had never before heard of such animals, and was intrigued to read more (I'm still reading the wealth of information that site contains). In simple terms, this form of nuclear fission can use existing spent fuel rods, or a form of uranium that has not been enriched to weapons grade, to generate electricity in a set-up that is designed to run virtually untended and that will in the event of a natural disaster -- flooding, earthquake -- shut itself down.

So, why has this technology not received wider publicity or support? It's hard to say. But one factor that has been cited is cost. In the facilities that were built (no more than one in any country up to now), the cost comparisons were skewed in favour of the Light Water or Heavy Water Reactors (the Canadian preferred type), because the experiments were small scale. There may have been another reason: IFRs do not produce weapons-grade material for nuclear bombs.

I'll contact the author of Brave New Climate to see if I can reproduce here some of his material, since his explanations of the technical aspects of IFRs are very clear.

One immediate benefit that comes to mind is that, if the technology can be cost-effective on a medium scale, we don't need to flood vast areas of Labrador, nor construct an absurdly long transmission line to bring electricity to markets in eastern Canada or the NE United States.

More to come.

My blog on the fishery got sidetracked.... (Is this a common problem among bloggers?). Since my last post, I have been thinking a little more about the structure of the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery, and here are a few, random comments:
1.  It seems that (I can't find confirmation of what I read) the Federal Government has slipped into the Omnibus Bill a statement that the fish in Canadian waters  in the North Atlantic will no longer be recognized as a Common Property Resource. With this designation, the fish in Canadian waters are deemed to be the property of the Canadian people, and thus nominally under the control of the Federal Government. This designation is important since it forms the ground for regulations governing quotas and disposal, that is it is the basis for setting the amount of fish caught, species to be harvested, and where the fish may be processed. There is overlap with provincial jurisdiction; the NL provincial government, for example, determines licences for fish plants and whether fish can be exported processed or whole.
But, without the designation of Common Property Resource, fish harvesters will be free to take what they can since no one entity owns the fish.
2.  It is becoming clearer to me that the decline, and slow recovery of the fish stocks, especially cod is not open to a simple explanation. Actions of fish harvesters have contributed: extensive use of draggers disturbing the sea-bed where cod spawn; the switch, after the cod moratorium, to shrimp fishing which reduced the available food supply for cod; the extensive over-fishing of caplin off Iceland which again reduced food supply for cod; and the continued high level of foreign fishing for cod on the noase and tail of the Banks.
However, another factor, which I have not seen discussed, is the effect of con trails, or vapour trails from transatlantic flights that reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the ocean surface, thereby reducing the growth of plankton and other minuscule entities that form the bottom of the food chain. When, during the three-day hiatus in flights following the 9/11 disaster, it was observed that temperatures rose, there seems to have been little follow-up to see what other effects might have been produced. A study elsewhere (in Israel, I believe) did show that there was an increase in the amount of beneficial sunlight reaching the ground.
3.  The recent closure of five fish plants in NL (and the confirmation of two further closures) raises certain questions. On the one hand we are told, by plant owners and the government, that there is not enough product to keep the plants going. But at the same time at least two of the plants have applied for permission to export unprocessed fish to China.

I'll leave this blog for now, and look forward to receiving comments.

Making Waves II

Making Waves II

I couldn’t keep my promise to blog again on this topic on Saturday. But that has given me a little more time to reflect on Wednesday evenings event.

I pointed out in the meeting that Ryan’s first four points dealt mainly with failed parliamentary and bureaucratic strategies to deal with a crisis whose beginningpre-dated the moratorium. Only the fifth, replacing NAFO, seemd to point forward to a new, future action, although in itself it might not produce immediate results.

The way NAFO is set up now, it does nothing to protect current fish stocks, nor provide hope that a sustainable fishery can be developed for the North Atlantic. Meetings are held at regular intervals to set quotas for the various stocks, but member countries are free to ignore the quotas and set their own targets.

Replacing NAFO does not seem to offer a solution, since there is no incentive for any country to change its current practice. I repeated a startegy that has been proposed in the past, namely that the fishermen needed to take matters into their own hands, and follow the example of the Icelandic fishermen, who, when faced with a similar situation concerning their cod stocks, armed their boats with giant scissors and cut the trawl lines of the (mainly) British fishermen who were then not respecting even the three-mile limit.

I was quickly put in my place by two speakers: one pointed out that the Icelandic fishers’ actions were backed by their government; the other said that such an action put all the onus on NL fishers. Both were right.

But their comments highlight the problems that can be placed at the door of the provincial and federal governments.  Our provincial government is doing almost nothing to help the situation in rural Newfoundland (it affects the island portion of the province primarily) when it allows unprocessed fish to be shipped abroad for processing, thereby exporting much-needed jobs.  And by linking fish quotas to pants rather than communities, it hands over one of the most powerful levers in the industry to private, profit-driven companies.

At the same time, the federal government is doing nothing to protect our fishing industry in international relations. When the 200-mile limit was set up, the agreement of Russia (and other Eastern Bloc coutries) was secured by handing over a substantial quota of cod withing that limit. Similar “make-weight” agreements have also been made in trade deals that initially had nothing to do with fish. And the Canadian government has done nothing to secure the 200-mile limit. We don’t send out warships. We send out private planes to observe foreign fishing fleets, but infringements are never pursued.

I’ll have more to say in future posts.

Making Waves

It's been a while since I posted. I think I am now over my viral infection (personal, not computer) and have more energy. Today's short blog is the first of a series on the fisheries crisis in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Making Waves

I attended this discussion last night, organised by Ryan Cleary, NDP MP for St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.  Ryan started the evening with a 20 minute presentation concerning his attempts to have an official inquiry (parliamentary? Judicial? He did not make that clear) into the state of the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Some of the history of the collapse of the northern cod fishery I was familiar with.  Since my involvement with Michael Cook’s prophetic play “Head Guts and Sound-bone Dance” in 1972, I had been paying attention to the fishing industry, following the Fisherman’s Broadcast on CBC almost very day. So my background to last night’s discussion was fairly broad, if not detailed.

Ryan had identified some 160 recommendations from 21 years of reports of various kinds. He had boiled them down to 20, and then selected 5 to present to last night’s audience. They were:

1.     Clarify objectives for the industry and develp a policy framework.

2.     Fisheries and Oceans need to develop sustainable conservation quotas for straddling stocks

3.     FaO should prepare an annual report as outline in the 1996 Oceans Act.

4.     FaO should adequately fund research and make it public.

5.     NAFO should be replaced.

From my perspective the first four dealt with parliamentary/bureaucratic problems. Recommendations for action have been made in how the Department at the federal level should have been managed for at least 20 years. The lack of action, and at times deliberate political interference, have resulted in FaO becoming dysfunctional. Scientific research has been consistently underfunded; scientists, in a by now familiar scenario, are being muzzled. Not only can they not speak out about their research, they cannot publish their results in respectable journals, nor even attend scientific conferences.

More on this tomorrow.