Nuclear power is not clean energy. That, from the President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, who explains that although it doesn’t produce greenhouse gas emissions, it does produce radioactive waste that has to be buried, and its longevity “dwarfs the history of the human race”.

Gordon Edwards adds that burying it underground has had its challenges. He points to depositories failing in both Germany and New Mexico.

Edwards adds that it is expensive to build a nuclear reactor and it takes a long time to go through the approval process, so even if more were to be built, for instance the Small Modular Reactors, they wouldn’t be done in time to help Canada reach its 2030 goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below its 2005 levels. He suggests that energy efficiency is the least expensive option.

Edwards says, “If we invested a lot of money in retrofitting buildings and just stopping the leakage of energy from buildings for example you could save more energy than nuclear power is able to produce in that same period of time.”

Edwards recently spoke at a virtual event from the Saskatchewan Environmental Society.