THE NUCLEARIZING OF CANADA

...Canadians can expect to find something of the sort on page one or on the evening news two or three times a week...

...In fact, capital costs for CANDU are considerably higher than for the American Light Water Reactors...

...Anti-nuclear demonstrations at power sites in Germany, arguably the hottest news item out of Germany since the Baader-Meinhoff gang, were hardly mentioned in the Canadian media...

...A SACRED COW THE NUCLEARIZINC OF CANADA Over a year has passed since Rene Levesque formed a Parti Quebecois government in Quebec, and Canadians are still bombarded with bits and pieces of a propaganda campaign masked as a debate about "national unity...

...Solicitor-General Francis Fox has promised legislation to control the activities of the police...

...Charges of breaking and entering and of opening first-class mail were raised in Parliament, and after initial denials it appears that this has been a routine matter since 1954...

...In the English-language media, only one side is ever heard...

...No matter what the subject, cabinet ministers appear to find that it demonstrates some flaw or other in the objectives of the PQ...

...Beyond this, part of Ontario Hydro's glowing predictions of the coming era of "cheap, clean nuclear energy" were based on predictions of prices under twenty dollars a pound for heavy water...

...In its efforts to sell CANDU (Canada's heavy water, natural uranium reactor) reactors to Argentina, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has been called upon to account for a mysterious two and one-half million dollars paid out—without receipts— in connection with efforts to get the Argentinian contract...

...After the hard facts are in, the picture tends to change—the predicted sixteen-dollar-per-pound heavy water then sells for seventy-seven fifty...

...Canada's nuclear energy program is a very fat and very sacred cow, and hardly anything that might cast doubts on its wisdom appears in the Canadian media...

...Yet while all this is greeted with varying amounts of indignation, sarcasm and journalistic globe-trotting (the answers are apparently to be looked for, if not found, in Italy, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Argentina and Ottawa), the fact that the contract thus landed, even after 3 February 1978: 70 renegotiation, involves a net loss of about $130 million hardly raises questions at all...

...We are left with the determination to get on with a program whose exact costs will probably never be known, much less revealed to the public...

...According to some governmental sources it was all right because there was no "criminal intent"—this time-honored legal concept being interpreted as a sort of medieval moral doctrine of good intention...

...We are busily engaged in the Great Debate on National Unity and some minor sideshows featuring the antics of politicians and policemen...

...Originally estimated at $700 million, a conservative estimate today would be $1 billion...

...Recently a spokesman for New Brunswick Electric Power Corporation (NBEPC) blithely predicted the construction of six six-hundred Megawatt Nuclear Power plants for the Atlantic region of Canada, and asserted that nuclear power would be significantly cheaper than coal...

...It did, however, appear that when probed by journalists, the NBEPC spokesman admitted that the cost of decommissioning plants was not included in their calculations, nor any costs for storage of radioactive waste...

...These are admittedly almost impossible to calculate, since they may have to include stringent security measures for ten thousand years or so, particularly in the wake of India's manufacture of an atomic explosive device (it is not proper to be vulgar and call it a bomb) from wastes of a CANDU reactor...

...But by then, of course, it is too late to do anything except pay the bills and wait for the day when the costs of decommissioning add even further to the expense...

...It should be assumed that interest charges are included in the calculation of the cost of nuclear energy in this project, but "PR bookkeeping" has its own rules, especially when future Utopias are under discussion...

...Such assertions are still common, although it is almost impossible to discover the assumptions behind them, whether for example they be based on a hypothetical capacity factor of eighty percent (newspaper reports spoke of "full" capacity, leaving the impression that "full" for a 600 MW Nuke is 600 MW), or the still optimstic fifty-seven percent that the USAEC hopes for from American Light Water Reactors...

...This, of course, like the price of a new house, reveals the cost of materials and construction, but not the cost of money...

...Some of it may well be true, but it has no resemblance to a debate...

...According to some governmental sources, this was not reported to Parliament because it was assumed that there was nothing wrong with it...

...Federal contributions Were t6 provide half the costs, but since these have been frozen at the original estimates, the people of New Brunswick will be obliged to pick up the rest...

...Atomic energy is not a matter for critical public debate, but for uncritical Public Relations...

...In another curious twist of political logic, Mr...

...Trudeau, at once more candid and apparently in tune with majority opinion, has been cited to the effect that while he does not condone illegal activities on the part of the police, steps should be taken to make those same activities legal when necessary to combat subversion and terrorism...

...However, with rare exceptions (mostly underground and ecological press) none of this is news in Canada...

...As construction proceeds, it becomes even more expensive...

...Trudeau apparently believes that the MacDonald Royal Commission, set up to investigate the activities of the RCMP, has as its principal objective the task of ensuring that police have the necessary powers...

...The sacred cow is to be given lots of heavy water to drink ($77.50 per pound at the Glace Bay Heavy Water Plant when the plant is not shut down for repair) and is to be milked with no questions as to what it costs...

...All this is news fit to print or to be aired...

...On the whole, the Canadian media are quite innocent of any critical discussion of nuclear energy...

...Cost escalation was almost certainly a principal factor in the withdrawal of both Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island from participation in the project...

...Yet there is one area in which, with few exceptions, news items are few and far between...

...Nothing, however, appears to deter the public relations industry on whose efforts the promise of cheap, clean nuclear energy is built...

...At the present time, it is doubtful whether the Glace Bay plant will ever pay off its capital costs selling heavy water at $77.50...

...Unemployment is higher than at any time since the thirties, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are under fire for bugging, opening first class mail and sundry other illegal activities, including the alleged burning of a barn in which an FLQ meeting was to be held because the bugging devices installed there were not working satisfactorily...

...The CANDU reactor is popularly supposed to be immune from any of the nasty problems associated with nuclear power in other places...

...In the context of Canada's unprecedented rates of unemployment, reaching thirty to forty percent in Cape Breton and Newfoundland, it is even more astounding that hardly anyone bothers to point out that of all the technologies devised by human beings to date (with the possible exception of moon shots) nuclear power is the most capital-intensive...

...If this be anything like recent crime control legislation passed by the Liberal government, the chances are that it will give the police the power to do legally what they have apparently deemed necessary in the past...

...New Brunswick's Point Lepreau nuclear power plant is a case in point...

...Apparently no one wants to go too deeply into the real costs of nuclear energy...

...It has now been obvious for some time that the investment made in nuclear power is simply too big to make any economic sense unless the technology can be exported...

...To add sauce to the mixture, electronic bugs have been found in the offices of some Conservative party leaders...

...JORDAN BISHOP {Jordan Bishop, a regular contributor, teaches at the College of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia...