YES! Experimental SMRs DO need an impact assessment

DearImpact Assessment Agency,

Dear Minister Guilbeault,

Thank you for all the work you do in keeping our biosphere safe.

I was very concerned to learn that the SMR Demonstration Project at Point Lepreau on the Bay of Fundy could proceed without a full Impact Assessment. How could this be?

I strongly urge you, as Minister of the Environment, to ensure that this project has the benefit of a full environmental Impact Assessment.

This first of its kind experimental nuclear project is on the traditional territory of the Peskotomuhkati Nation with ramifications for the rights of the Wolastoqey and Mi'gmaq Nations. Without a doubt, treaty and Indigenous rights must be included in the Impact Assessment.

The proposed project will be located in a beautiful, coastal rural region with locally important fishing, tourism and wild blueberry industries, next to the Musquash Estuary Nature Reserve and near the globally significant UNESCO Biosphere Reserve on the Bay of Fundy.

The SMR Demonstration Project at Point Lepreau ought to attract the most rigorous form of public engagement and planning, through the Impact Assessment Act.

I fully support the request by the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB) for you to designate this project for an Impact Assessment.

Plus:

·  SMRs must never be exempted from responsible environmental Impact Assessments.

·  Not having an Impact Assessment disregards Indigenous territorial rights and concerns.

·  By exempting SMRs from an Impact Assessment, the Government of Canada is promoting the interests of the nuclear industry at the expense of the Canadian public. 

·  Why do the government and nuclear industry want to keep the negative impacts of SMRs from the public?

·  The SMR project relies on experimental technologies. We should not have a nuclear experiment next to the Bay of Fundy without a thorough assessment!

- Claims that the project will ‘recycle’ nuclear waste are false. Recycling used nuclear fuel creates new forms of radioactive waste that are especially dangerous to manage.

·  SMRs will make more nuclear waste, increasing the risk of hazardous accidents for thousands of years to come.

Sincerely,

Michael Glennon.

Sincerely,
Michael Glennon
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