Say no to small modular reactors: Stop normalizing the exploitation of nature

Among other global crises, the worsening impacts of climate change are intensifying every year. Last year was the warmest on record and, beginning in March 2023, raging wildfires filled cities across Canada with smoke for months. This year is already shaping up to be warmer than the last. This is why a lot of young people are questioning the very systems we live under. This is why many of us support a rapid and just transition in energy. But in this process, some governments are promoting an expansion of nuclear power, supposedly to solve climate change. I fear that such an expansion will result in my generation having to confront an equally terrifying set of problems resulting from the nuclear fuel chain.

This is precisely what I already see happening around me in the Canadian province of New Brunswick where I live and study. Over the last few years, the province’s government has advocated for and funded the development of what it calls small modular reactors (SMRs). Even though SMR doesn’t include the word “nuclear,” these are nuclear reactors. Ostensibly, these reactors are meant to decarbonize the Canadian economy. But in 2021, New Brunswick Energy Minister Mike Holland protested the 2030 target for phasing out coal in the province, saying new nuclear reactors would not be ready in time to meet that goal. How will the expansion of nuclear power decarbonize the economy if, meanwhile, New Brunswick is still extracting and burning fossil fuels?

The province has funded two companies—Moltex Energy and ARC Clean Technology—to develop small modular reactors. On their websites, Moltex and ARC market nuclear power as “clean,” “carbon free,” and a “clean energy solution.”

Last year, Moltex CEO Rory O’Sullivan spoke to me, my fellow students, and professors working on the Plutonium Project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in which we explored these small modular reactors being proposed for the province to develop an understanding of the assumptions, claims, and implications of these technologies. I remember O’Sullivan as friendly and well-spoken. He emphasized that a transition away from fossil fuels is necessary and that renewable energy is a key element in this transition. Yet he told us that wind farms, for example, could not generate enough energy to sustain our society, and that battery storage was not advanced enough to help with this, and thus renewables could not be considered an effective climate solution on their own. This is why he advocates for small modular reactors—as a necessary supplement to renewables in the energy transition. But, again, he stressed that, at Moltex, they were working to reduce any potential safety risks.

This made me wonder: What about the highly radioactive waste these reactors will produce?

Even if SMRs produce less waste than past nuclear reactors (although not when weighted by how much electricity they produce), spent fuel will remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. While nuclear proponents have argued that a deep geological repository would be an effective storage space for the waste, there are many uncertainties surrounding this proposal, and the long-term impacts are unknown. The proposed sites for the repository are located on traditional Indigenous lands in the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace and Saugeen Ojibway Nation-South Bruce areas in Ontario. Because the safety of the proposed repository is unproven, storing radioactive waste there would jeopardize the health of the local Indigenous communities and their lands.

Moltex and ARC have advertised reprocessing as a way to recycle waste and use it to power other reactors. However, this is also incredibly dangerous, because once plutonium is separated from used nuclear fuel, it can be used much more easily in the production of atomic weapons. If separated plutonium were to fall into the wrong hands, the result would be nuclear proliferation—an increased number of nuclear weapons across the globe.

In addition to the waste and proliferation problems, small modular reactors will not be built and operating in time to be an effective climate solution. Canada’s climate targets involve decreasing greenhouse gas emissions to 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2050. However, ARC predicts that it will finish building its first small modular reactor by 2028 which will “replace the existing coal generation station in 2030” at Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in Saint John, New Brunswick. And Moltex does not expect to have an “operational reactor” until “the early 2030s.”

This timeline will clearly not help Canada reach its decarbonization goal by 2030, and so the country will not be on track for the 2050 goal either. Given these realities, I find it hard to believe that nuclear power is in the best interest of humans, non-human species, or the planet as a whole.

Capitalist nations that prioritize economic growth above all else, such as the United States and Canada, have normalized the exploitation of nature. This has happened with the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, and it will happen again with the radioactive waste produced by new nuclear reactors if humans do not learn from past mistakes. It is hard enough to deal with the large stockpile of radioactive waste produced by conventional nuclear reactors that were built during the late 20th century, when the public and even experts knew less about how difficult this material is to deal with.

Humans cannot effect meaningful change in the face of the climate crisis without seriously reexamining the relationship they have with Earth. Can we dismantle the current  relationship in favor of reciprocal relationships with the natural world and each other?

I had an interesting conversation on January 14 with gkisedtanamoogk, a Wampanoag elder and member of the Otter Clan from the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, about learning to listen to the natural world. I am a research assistant for the Contesting Energy Discourses through Action Research (CEDAR) Project, and I met gkisedtanamoogk during a panel on energy transitions at a CEDAR event.

gkisedtanamoogk went by an English name and identified as a typical “Joe America” until the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by followers of the American Indian Movement. This made gkisedtanamoogk, then a sophomore in college, wonder about what it meant to be a Wampanoag. gkisedtanamoogk traveled back to the Mashpee community to explore traditional songs, languages, and ceremonies with other young people there.

After becoming reconnected to these Indigenous roots, gkisedtanamoogk—who now goes by thing/it pronouns because so many of its teachers are non-human and are often referred to with these terms—abandoned its English name in favor of its traditional Indigenous name. gkisedtanamoogk has identified as “Joe Wampanoag” ever since.

gkisedtanamoogk is now married to Miigam’agan, the Elder-in-Residence at St. Thomas University and an elder of the Burnt Church First Nation in New Brunswick. The proposal to construct small modular reactors at Point Lepreau—the site of New Brunswick’s only existing nuclear power plant—is close to home for gkisedtanamoogk, who moved to the province years ago to live with Miigam’agan.

In our conversation, gkisedtanamoogk told me, “I can’t help but notice that Earth and Creation go to great lengths to keep us alive. They make a place for us, and we have a duty and an obligation and a responsibility to be reciprocal.” When gkisedtanamoogk spoke these words, it was with a soft but powerful voice. gkisedtanamoogk’s gray hair was shaved on the sides, and the rest was pulled back into a short ponytail at the nape. Earrings made from some kind of animal tooth dangled from each of gkisedtanamoogk’s ears, and I noticed a couple dragonfly pins: one attached to gkisedtanamoogk’s hat alongside a bird feather and the other pinned over gkisedtanamoogk’s heart.

Maybe a reciprocal relationship with Earth is about learning to listen to the whispers in the trees and the songs in the wind, or the “ancient song” as gkisedtanamoogk calls it—and recognizing all the natural world does for us. In doing so, humans can reconnect with the natural community and remember their place in it. With this respect for nature, humans can then stop degrading it with our energy pursuits, from dirty fossil fuels to radioactive nuclear power.

Nearly two-thirds of Canadians support an emissions cap on the oil and gas industry. The majority of Canadians recognize the necessity for a transition away from fossil fuels. But let’s not transition into an age of radioactive waste and nuclear proliferation. Let’s not transition to another problem disguised as a solution.

In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation based in Shawnee, Oklahoma, writes beautifully about a reciprocal relationship with the planet, rather than an exploitative one: “As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.”

Canadians must begin to mend their relationship with the natural world through actions such as transitioning to renewable energy and consuming less overall. But we all must act now, in the most responsible and caring ways that we can, so that we do not leave a legacy of environmental destruction and toxic waste for future generations.

Earth has sustained us since time immemorial, and we have a responsibility to give back to the natural world for all it has given to us. That is the legacy I want to leave.