Color Him Surprised on the Popularity of Nuclear Energy

Just in case you thought Canadians were different from Americans:

Ontarians favor nuclear power by a margin of more than two to one, a new public opinion survey suggests.

The Forum Research poll found that 54 per cent are comfortable with atomic energy compared to 23 per cent who oppose it, while 23 per cent had no opinion.

That’s 77 percent in favor or non-committal. I should add that this is the province that has nuclear energy facilities –  I’ve read that the other provinces are less in favor of nuclear energy. I haven’t really seen it borne out by polls, though support does run under Ontario. This poll, from Abacus Data in 2011, shows all Canadians supporting nuclear energy (or non-committal) at 56 percent, which is not terrible.

Now, this survey was done soon after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, so some of its findings may have faded with time. It asks explicitly whether views on nuclear energy have worsened as a result of the accident. Forty-nine percent said yes, 43 percent said no. That suggests to me that Canadians, like Americans, made the distinction between their industry – and the people’s relative faith in it - and that of another country. I suspect that the number would go up in 2012 and 2013.

Back in Ontario:

“I hate to use this analogy, but it’s not as radioactive an issue as it used to be,” [pollster Forum Research] president Lorne Bozinoff said Tuesday.

“This is a new generation of people and they weren’t around at the height of the anti-nuclear stuff,” said Bozinoff, adding he was “surprised” at the level of acceptance of nuclear energy in Ontario.

Funny guy. it’s just a guess on his part and his is as good as mine, but I also imagine that the manifest benefits of nuclear energy in Ontario – good jobs and economic development – help its standing. For me, the surprising aspect of looking into this is to find that Canada, despite the concentration of its nuclear energy industry in Ontario, probably could expand westward based just on public opinion.

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Another story in The Toronto Star is headlined “Halloween spirit has turned tasteless.” But if it isn’t tasteless, it isn’t Halloween. Maybe Americans and Canadians are different from one another.

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Canada, Westinghouse and A Fusion Follow-Up

Westinghouse previews a forum taking place today in Toronto called The Future of Nuclear. Westinghouse has no reactors in Canada and isn’t trying to sell any in its press release, which does include some interesting tidbits:

"With 55 per cent of Ontario's energy being generated by nuclear, and given the province's commitment to clean-air sources of energy, nuclear cannot be ignored as a vital part of Ontario's energy mix," says Ron Lewis, vice president, Nuclear Power Plant Business and Project Development, Westinghouse Electric Company.

That 55 percent figure is new  - it’s a little higher than I’ve seen before - and I’m not enough up on Canadian energy markets to know how much of that is exported to Ontario’s neighbors. That said, Ontario is the only province to aggressively pursue nuclear energy, with five facilities housing 20 reactors. Quebec and New Brunswick have 2 and 1 reactors respectively, with Quebec’s retired. When we looked at Canadian nuclear energy previously, it seemed the other provinces were pretty dim on nuclear energy and not particularly well informed as to its benefits.

All Canadian reactors are home grown CANDUs.The DU stands for Deuterium Uranium and hints at the use of deuterium (heavy water, actually, or deuterium oxide) to moderate the nuclear reaction, a unique feature of this design. I poked around the Candu web site and found the company is moving right along:

One of the unique features of CANDU reactor design is its ability to use alternative fuels such as recovered uranium (RU) from the reprocessing of used light water reactor fuel, low-enriched uranium (LEU) and plutonium (Pu) mixed oxide, thorium and actinides, in addition to the conventional natural uranium. Candu is currently working with China to further develop thorium as an alternative fuel source.

So, for this forum, Westinghouse is more focused on touting the benefits of nuclear energy, priming the pump for the siting of new reactors and perhaps – just maybe – one or more of those will be AP1000s. We’ll see. In the meantime:

"Canada has spent more than a generation developing nuclear energy, dating back to the 1950s right here in Ontario. The Province has an industrial base that depends on further build-out. On balance, nuclear is the best choice for jobs and the environment. The alternative is a move to high-cost electricity generation and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, which are unavoidable if nuclear is not a part of Ontario's future energy mix," Lewis says.

Indeed.
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Since we had a little fun with fusion and the National ignition Facility’s project related to it last week, it’s only fair to pass along this news from the BBC:

The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.

The story goes on to make the point that the goal is to make a lot more energy than is used, but out of negative numbers? Very good news for the fusion profusion crowd.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For a deeper dive on what's happening in Canada, we suggest Canadian Energy Issues, written by the tireless Stephen Aplin.

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Nuclear Ingots from Canada, Pakistan, UAE

From Canada, the least unexpected news of the day:

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has completed a ground-breaking study on populations living near Ontario's three nuclear power plants (NPPs). The most important finding of this study is no evidence of childhood leukemia clusters in the communities within 25 km of the Pickering, Darlington and Bruce NPPs.

Fine for the kids. What about the rest of us?

Overall, the study found that all cancers are well within the natural variation of the disease and there is no consistent pattern across the three facilities studied. When looking at all age groups, some cancers were higher than expected and some cancers were lower than expected. The most likely causes of cancer in the communities are a number of known health risk factors.

There have been a fair number of these studies and the result has invariably been the same. We should wave these in front of the Cape Codders (in the post below) and do some unseemly crowing. A Canadian would never do something like that, though.

I was curious about those known health risks.

"Sixty percent of all cancers in Ontario are due to smoking, obesity, poor diet and physical inactivity," said Rachel Lane, epidemiologist and lead researcher on the RADICON study.

Sounds like an unusually honest dating site profile, doesn’t it?

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Oddest comment of the day:

"It is sad that a nuclear power is without power for up to 20 hours (a day). Are other nuclear powers in the same state as Pakistan? We should look into the reasons why the country doesn't even have electricity," Sharif said while addressing a function here to commemorate "Youm-e-Takbeer", which marks the nuclear tests conducted by Pakistan in 1998.

Sharif is Nawaz Sharif, the next (and past, two terms in the 90s) Prime Minister of Pakistan. I agree – he should look into it and right away, too. If he were an American politician, I might read his reference to “nuclear power” as an oddly phrased endorsement of, well, nuclear power (Pakistan has three relatively small reactors, with the last opened in 2011), but the article suggests he is in favor of opening coal plants with any eye to switchgrass-style biomass down the road.

As long as Pakistan is a “nuclear power,” perhaps a megatons to megawatts program is called for.

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As long as we’re on the international beat, let’s mark a milestone:

With the construction of a second nuclear plant now under way, the UAE has reached another important milestone in its mission to generate safe, clean, reliable and efficient nuclear energy, a senior official said yesterday.

I think they mean reactor – it’s the second one at the Barakah facility. Some of the earlier builds (in other countries) had some delays, but more recent build seems to have learned the lessons and stamped out the issues. Barakah is going up exceptionally fast.

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We sometimes point you to the NEI Network, NEI’s YouTube channel – nicely curated and updated on a regular basis (not by me, so no self-back patting here). But there are other good videos lurking about: the Science Channel’s “How It’s Made” series is one such. It currently has a short segment up on the manufacturing of used nuclear fuel storage containers. Nicely done in 5 minutes or so – well worth a quick watch.

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From the Motley Fool:

Is Nuclear Energy's Lightbulb Dimming?

No, not even for the sake of nuclear link bait. Next question.

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How Nuclear Energy Helps Canada Snag Data Center Business

Courtesy of the Globe and Mail

Over the holidays, the Globe and Mail, Canada's major national newspaper, took note of a positive business trend for our neighbors to the North -- namely, how more and more companies were locating computer data centers in the country. The trend is becoming so pronounced, that some are openly speculating that the greater Toronto metropolitan area could become a global hub for data center operations.

Among the reasons why: Canada's cool climate means that data centers operating there don't have to spend nearly as much money on energy in order to keep cool. And it doesn't hurt that the nation has access to plenty of affordable and reliable electricity:

Information technology services company Fujitsu Canada is planning to open a facility to take advantage of what Canada has to offer. Free cooling, however, is only part of the picture. Access to cheap, clean, reliable energy is also a magnet for investors looking to build these power-hungry facilities, some of which consume roughly as much energy as a small city.

“The advantage Canada has is it’s far cheaper and easier to bring data to power sources, and vice versa,” says Mike O’Neil, president of IT research firm IT Market Dynamics. “It’s much cheaper to stick your data centre next to a hydro dam.”

Or in the case of Ontario, Canada's most heavily populated province, a nuclear power plant. After all, nuclear energy, along with hydropower, are the two leading sources of emission-free electricity all over the world. According to our friends at Ontario Power Generation, more than 50% of the province's electricity is generated by nuclear energy. Together, the nuclear energy facilities at Pickering and Darlington generate an impressive 6,600 megawatts.

As our Mark Flanagan noted a few months ago, Greenpeace has tried to raise hackles about companies relocating data centers to areas with copious amounts of nuclear energy, but the whole effort hasn't seemed to amount to much thus far. It's too bad the Globe and Mail failed to mention how nuclear energy is helping foster the trend they've identified.

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Inescapable Dilemmas: A Few Friday Nuclear Readings

From the end of a column in the Guardian by Neil Hirst of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change:

All in all, there is no simple answer to this question. If you believe strongly enough that we should phase out nuclear then with sufficiently strong political commitment around the world, this could be done consistently with tackling climate change. However, as a practical matter, we are far from being on course to limit carbon emissions to levels consistent with a 2C target. Ruling out one of the major low-carbon technology options currently available is bound to add to the difficulty and the risk of what is already looking like a very tough challenge. Balancing the problems of nuclear power against its contribution to climate mitigation (and other energy policy objectives) is an inescapable dilemma.

Hirst knows as well as we do that finding “sufficiently strong political commitment around the world” to shutter nuclear energy is as likely as finding sufficiently strong political commitment to do anything, notably about climate change. After all, that’s the “inescapable dilemma” he sees by shutting down the facilities.

Hirst has contributed an unusually sophisticated and nuanced argument, especially for a newspaper piece – worth a full read.

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From John P. Banks and Kevin Massy at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, a similar view, but a different angle:

While the developed world gets cold feet on nuclear power, its prospects in developing countries are different. The challenges of meeting electricity demand, reducing reliance on imported energy, and promoting economic growth while lowering carbon dioxide emissions, leave many emerging nations with no alternative but to consider nuclear energy as a key component of their economic development and energy security strategies.

I’m not as convinced the developed world is quite so chilly, but let’s give that to the authors. Or that the alternatives are so slender that nuclear energy is the only way to proceed. The reason for this doubt is that nuclear energy answers to more issues than just climate change – energy security and independence, the prospect of a very large amount of electricity for one admittedly large investment, etc. Still, the authors investigate the issue with due seriousness:

In our view, lack of stakeholder engagement is a major contributing factor. Governments that may not have a tradition of proactively explaining policy decisions and responding to questions and concerns in a timely and transparent manner are now confronting the reality that engaging in a dialog with all interested parties is essential, especially for an endeavor with such long-term and unique safety, environmental, cost, proliferation and strategic characteristics.

This is the gist of their piece and they provide examples of governments pursuing nuclear energy without buy in from their peoples, leading to protests borne of fear. Perhaps the idea is a bit oversold, but it seems a good topic with which to engage.

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From Dr. Dale Dewar, executive director of the group Physicians for Global Survival, in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix:

An industry born in the secrecy of the Manhattan Project, building the nuclear bomb in the 1940s, it has continued to operate largely behind closed doors. Power plant construction has been highly government subsidized, consistently subjected to lengthy technical delays and always massively overbudget.

Anti-nuclear advocates often try the history-of-secrecy approach to imagine the nuclear industry a kind of atomic star chamber, doling out energy justice as it sees fits and irradiating its enemies out of inborn vicious spite. It’s a pretty old fashioned attack – at least Dr. Dewar could cast herself as the van Helsing dragging the shrieking nucleus of evil out of the shadows before staking it.

I wondered about the doctor, whose full column is equally littered with, shall we call it, antispeak, that is, a collection of dire if bald and dubious assertions. Here’s a little about her, after winning a raffle held by  International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War:

Dr. Dewar lives on a cash-strapped struggling Land Trust in Saskatchewan. She and her husband are delighted with the raffle win and plan to put it to good use in their continued exploration of alternative energy and lifestyles. Part of the ticket was purchased by the PGS, administrative officer, Andrea Levy, who earmarked her win to visit and provide supportive care to a dear friend on the other side of the continent. There will be many people and projects who will benefit!

Which is great! We also learn that she is a family doctor, great, too, especially if she is providing service at that Land Trust. I wonder if there is a certain groupthink in these interlinking groups, but it does help explain the “industry born in secrecy” view if you’re determined to connect the Manhattan Project to domestic nuclear energy.

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Nuclear Takes Charge in Ontario–But Whither Coal?

This is good news worth attending to:

Nuclear generator Bruce Power's Unit 2 sent power to Ontario's electricity grid for the first time in 17 years yesterday, part of Bruce Power's revitalization program and an important step to eliminating the use of coal-fired electricity in 2014.

In Ontario, not all of Canada.

Over the past 10 years, Ontario has decreased its coal reliance by 90 percent, and Bruce Power has increased its nuclear output by 55 percent. Bruce is positioned to generate a quarter of the province's electricity -- enough to power cities the size of Ottawa and London, Ontario combined -- now that Units 1 and 2 are back and its full capacity of 8 units is being realized.

It may not be as obvious to us as it is to Canadians what Bruce Power is trying to do here. So let’s let Bruce Power tell you:

With the return to service of Units 1 and 2, Bruce Power will remain a key player in both reducing and staying off coal, which is one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in North America.

Nuclear energy allows this outcome.

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The above excerpts mention coal about as many times as nuclear energy. I don’t have a brief on coal, really, and certainly not about Canada’s use of it, but surely, divergent views can converge on the fact that coal mining, processing and transportation is a considerable portion of the work force in some states in the U.S.

And coal lately has had a rough ride of it. This chart from the National Mining Association shows that the number of workers engaged in coal mining was almost 82,000 in 2011 – that’s a big number but only about half the 155,000 number in 1985 – and the 2010 number represents something of a comeback. The low was 62,000 in 2003, well less than half the 1985 number.

Although it is nuclear energy that is displacing coal in Ontario, that is not true in the United States. Indeed, if coal is under pressure in this country, it is from natural gas.

Coal won’t win back much of the share of electricity generation that it has lost to natural gas in the U.S., Moody’s Investors Service said.

“Coal will regain a bit of market share as natural gas prices recover somewhat, but most coal-to-gas substitution to date will be permanent,” Anna Zubets-Anderson, a Moody’s vice president and senior analyst, wrote in the report. Production from shale has boosted gas inventories and coal has faced more scrutiny from environmental regulators.

This is true. The low cost of natural gas has put some pressure on all baseload energy, including nuclear energy, and since it carries half the carbon emissions of coal, it is more attractive as a coal replacement - if a primary goal is plentiful base load energy with fewer carbon emissions. Nuclear energy would be even better, as Ontario is finding out – it produces no carbon emissions at all – but there you are. (Nuclear uprates, which allow facilities to produce more electricity through equipment upgrades, also has a role here.)

So – it’s natural gas that is applying pressure to the coal industry.

But maybe not. A rather odd op-ed column by the Washington Post’s Charles Lane links the fate of coal to the encouragement of renewable energy sources – and considers this bad because the higher cost of electricity thus generated has an impact on poorer Americans.

I found the column puzzling on its face because it takes a complex set of policy goals, simplifies them until they warp into an unrecognizable shape, then adds an ideological dimension that turns Democrats who support renewable energy into hypocrites. It’s an entertaining show, granted, but deeply weird:

Green energy is not cost-competitive with traditional energy and won’t be for years. So it can’t work without either taxpayer subsidies, much of which accrue to “entrepreneurs” such as [former Vice President Al] Gore, or higher prices for fossil energy — the brunt of which is borne by people of modest means.

I don’t get the quotes around entrepreneurs or grasp the idea that electricity to “people of modest means” could not continue to be subsidized, as is often the case now. The idea is not to punish those folks – if anything, it is the “entrepreneur” class that will help out with the subsidization, along with utilities and government. Lane seems to believe Gore will be personally breaking into shacks and stealing fuses if the United States dares to do anything with “uncompetitive” renewable energy.  But what about nuclear energy – and natural gas? 

Obviously, creative destruction is part of what makes capitalism go. There’s no inherent reason to protect coal mines any more than buggy-whip makers. The biggest threat to coal country comes from vast new supplies of natural gas, not from wind and solar.

The point remains: Government, with its inevitable susceptibility to lobbying and favoritism, should not be picking winners and losers, whether through green subsidies or tax breaks for oil and gas.

In other words, the argument doesn’t work – because natural gas is currently less expensive than coal – but we’ll stick with it anyway.

Additionlly, all energy generators receive government subsidies, depending on how tight you define subsidy – see page xiii of this Energy Information Agency document to compare the figures.

Nuclear energy has been rather unfairly dinged by some commentators for receiving outsized government subsidies, but really, coal and nuclear energy both depend far less on government subsidy than renewable energy types and natural gas – coal and nuclear are mature and well-understood.

See here for more on subsidies – this is a Management Information Services study. The MISI report shows that the main beneficiaries of more than $800 billion of federal energy incentives over the past six decades have been the oil and natural gas industries, and that nuclear energy and renewable technologies each have received about 9 percent of the total incentives provided by the federal government since 1950. (Of course, both came into their own after 1950, nuclear only a little after, but the study accounts for this.)

Another peculiar argument:

Fact is, subsidies for green energy do not so much create jobs as shift them around.

That’s true if we assume that jobs are only generated by subsidies. But that’s not true: nuclear energy and renewable energy do not soak up subsidies like sponges and create genuine additional jobs. So does natural gas. Coal picked up 20,000 additional miners since 2003.

To put it another way: electricity production is not going anywhere. In the absence of a price on carbon emissions – through a carbon tax or cap-or-trade or another mechanism – there’s no particular pressure on the price of electricity besides the usual ones (well, some particular pressures: state and federal regulation can certainly have an impact.)

I think the purpose of Lane’s column is largely an attempt to show that liberals support renewable energy that he supposes mostly benefits wealthy people (because they afford things like solar panels) instead of their traditional working class and union allies, thus opening up charges of hypocrisy. It seems an altogether pointless exercise that dismisses the benefits of renewable energy and elides nuclear energy right out of the picture.

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Just to keep up the bona fides, Lane mentions nuclear energy in passing:

For a sense of where this [favoring renewable energy over “traditional” energy sources] may lead, look at Germany, whose crash program to replace nuclear power with wind and solar is boosting electricity rates. Der Spiegel reports that 200,000 long-term unemployed lost power in 2011 because they couldn’t pay their electric bills.

I wrote about this the other day, so I won’t ride that hobby horse again, except to say that this is a false analogy. America is not like Germany, which is practically unique in its haywire energy policy. And I’d counter that the long-term unemployed are going to have trouble with their electric bills and all their other bills as well. That’s the nature of long term unemployment.

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The Most Polite Strikers Ever and Nuclear Energy in Canada

The CANDU's fuel assembly

Way up north, a group of nuclear engineers are striking against contractors of Canada’s Candu Energy. They haven’t had a new contract since January 2011 and, presumably, want to negotiate a new one.

Striking nuclear engineers from SNC-Lavalin Group Inc's Candu Energy subsidiary escalated their dispute with the company on Wednesday, setting up picket lines at Ontario reactors for the first time and delaying shift changes at the plants.

Uh-oh. Does this close the plants?

The reactors' operators, Bruce Power and Ontario Power Generation, both said the pickets do not threaten safe operations at their facilities.
"They delayed staff coming in but there was no impact on operations," said Ontario Power Generation (OPG) spokesman Ted Gruetzner.

Canadians being as they are, the whole thing seems very polite.

"We decided to do this to try to get our customers to send a message to our employer that it's time to do something about this," said Michael Ivanco, a senior scientist and vice president of the union.

And:

Following the morning picket, Bruce Power announced that it has struck a deal with the strikers that will ensure no further picketing at the Bruce plant.

None of the stories I’ve seen have said anything about how contract negotiations are going or even if such negotiations are happening. So we can’t assume anything – well, except that strikes and pickets can happen at Canadian nuclear energy facilities without shutting down the plants.
Everyone is operating within the spirit and letter of the law – I looked for, and couldn’t find, editorials from local newspapers weighing in, and news stories about this haven’t escapes the business pages - so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.
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It’s an old joke that Canadians are the tidy cousins to the anarchists to their south, but consider: nuclear energy in Canada contributes to a fairly responsible mix of energy types:

Canada generated 603 billion kWh in 2009, of which about 15% was from nuclear generation, compared with 60% from hydro, 15% from coal and 6% from gas. Annual electricity use is about 14,000 kWh per person, one of the highest levels in the world.

Well, I guess energy efficiency could be better, but I wonder how much of that kilowatt usage has to do with avoiding deep freezes. Still, if Canada scales back on coal in favor of nuclear energy (it is building an 18th reactor currently) or natural gas or renewable energy beyond hydro, it will be near perfect on the environmental front. Still, energy security is enhanced by using coal, as Canada mines nearly all of it domestically.
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Canada uses a home-grown technology for its nuclear reactors, called CANDU. These reactors use unenriched uranium – which saves money by bypassing enrichment – which is possible because the nuclear reaction is moderated by heavy water (deuterium oxide) – an additional expense. CANDU stands for Canada deuterium uranium. (Look here for a much fuller explanation of how the CANDU reactor works. It’s really fascinating.)
Canada chose this method in part because it didn’t have access to enrichment facilities when it began its nuclear energy effort in the 50s, but it has stuck with it and built a global business on it. The CANDU site lists several international buyers, including China and India, the latter creating its own CANDU-like design to create a native industry.
Within Canada, all but one of the operating reactors are in Ontario, with the exception being Gentilly in Quebec. Consequently, 56 percent of electricity in Ontario is generated by nuclear energy with hydro second at 22 percent.
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How popular is nuclear energy in Canada? Although this poll from Innovative Research Group released this year covers the whole country, it’s probably fairest to focus on Ontario. For example, the whole country is against building new facilities by 63-33 percent, not great. But in Ontario, 48 percent support the proposition (and Saskatchewan is in the 40s, too, maybe because of talk of using nuclear energy to extract oil from the tar sands.)
But the majority (or plurality) of Canadians think nuclear energy is dirty, expensive and overseen by vipers – “63% distrust big nuclear energy business” - except, when the provinces are broken out, in Ontario. Is knowing nuclear energy to like it better? It would seem so – plus, I wager, more effort was made in Ontario to explain its benefits.
There’s likely some overhang from the Fukushima Daiichi accident impacting these numbers, but they do suggest that Canadian nuclear interests need to offer some facts and figures to the public west of Ontario. It’s not that it needs to be a love feast – you can’t be loved by everyone everywhere - but it just isn’t true, for example, that nuclear energy is more expensive that solar power, as most Canadians believe. Just getting the facts straight would do a world of good.

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In a Land of Wolves

In the short surrealist documentary Land Without Bread (1933), Luis Bunuel makes a point that has always stuck with me: good intentions can lead to terrible outcomes.

In the film, the church tries to help the people of Las Hurdas, who live in grueling poverty. But the would-be recipients of this charity don’t want it, misuse through ignorance largesse or advice given to them and make their overall situation manifestly worse. (The title refers to the church’s effort to improve nutrition in the area by giving out loaves of bread, but the people don’t understand what bread is and throw it out.)

None of this is literally true – Bunuel made it all up – yet it feels true, a description of the misery that can result from what anyone would consider the best intentions. (And the actual people of Las Hurdas spent years living down the dreadful image of them shown in the film.)

In attempting to maintain an economic recovery and help the caribou herd that is fast disappearing as a result, Canada may have concocted its own version of Las Hurdas. Or has it?

There is no question that Canada’s caribou population is dropping steeply and quickly in the western part of the country.

Last month, Environment Canada released its long-awaited draft recovery plan for perilous herds of woodland caribou.

It said that many of the caribou herds in Canada were in satisfactory shape, but in northern Alberta and parts of British Columbia, the situation is dire. Almost all the Alberta herds are classified as "very unlikely" to survive.

Though the herd’s territory overlaps the oil sands region, the increasing development of that area is not considered to be determinative in the caribou’s fate. The work on the oil sands does, however, contribute to the increasing industrialization of the area, and that most definitely is the cause for the caribou’s plight.

So it’s not a question of saying that working the oil sands should necessarily cease in order to save the caribou nor should any other specific activity stop. Canada wants the oil it can extract from the sands, it wants to foster employment in that area and it wants the caribou herd to stabilize.

Enter the wolves, which kill young caribou:

Environment Canada's research shows that 100 wolves would need to die for every four caribou calves saved. While Kent would not go through the math to say how many wolves he thinks are at risk in total, he did not disagree with experts' estimates.

"It would be an astronomical effort. It would be thousands of wolves in the end. It's not a very appealing option," said Stan Boutin, a caribou biologist at the University of Alberta.

I’ll say it’s not an appealing option: killing thousands of wolves must have an impact on the ecosystem. Another option being considered is creating a very large fenced area to keep in the caribou and keep out the wolves, but this idea has consequences, too:

"It's a direct trade-off, and society and everybody is going to have to make some real hard decisions there, because you cannot, over extensive areas, have both of those activities going on and preserve caribou unless you go to other drastic conservation efforts like predator control or fencing," he [Boutin] said.

"The fencing issue comes down to: will society buy into what many consider creating a bit of a zoo?"

I’m not sure, in context, what Boutin means by “both of those activities,” but he gets at the problem here, which is that even the largest penned area will artificially contain the herd and limit its territory. That’s not a good way to foster a population expansion.

This story really has nothing to do with the oil sands, except that the pursuit of energy sources involves an industrial process and an influx of people to drive it. This story could just as easily be about a nuclear energy facility. The specific situation demonstrates that good intentions can sometimes lead to unintended outcomes.

But it need not be so. Electricity plants, including nuclear energy facilities, have dealt responsibly with the fact that pulling water from a river can lead to fish mortality.

For example:

Southern California Edison this week [this was published in November 2011] dedicated a newly completed wetlands area that provides a habitat for diverse fish and waterfowl populations near the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

While San Onofre’s ocean water cooling system has only a small impact on area marine life, it does affect some small fish and fish larvae. The wetlands restoration, along with several other environmental protection projects spearheaded by SCE, mitigates these effects.

This comes from NEI’s member newsletter, so no link. If you’d like to learn more about this, here’s another story about fish around nuclear energy plants. It should also be noted that fish are excellent self-sustainers and will make spawn more fish if circumstances warrant.

The response to fish mortality issues represents an instance where long experience bore workable solutions. In the same way, Canada is trying to find a responsible solution to the caribou problem. But the proposed solutions in this instance are exceptionally terrible. Everyone in the story about this from Global Calgary seems to think of the situation as sickening, especially when considering the fate of the wolves.

So - there really is no plausible solution yet. Canada isn’t going to put the breaks on industrialization or send Alberta’s economy into a tailspin.

And, to take the pessimistic p.o.v, slaughtering the wolves may not save the caribou. Fencing in the caribou may not save them because their changing habitat may trump all attempts to protect them. All the best efforts may come to naught.

In which case, as the wise man said, Chaos reigns, and Alberta could find itself denuded of caribou and wolves, surely the worse possible outcome. But then again, as with the fish, a good solution might yet be found. The trade between good intention and problematic outcomes need not lead to despair, though it’s hard not to sympathize with the people working on this problem.

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There are a lot of stories out there, some linked above, blaming all this on “rapacious” oil sands magnates. Certainly, the development of the oil sands cannot be denied as a cause, but climate change has also played a large role, particularly in the Northern Territories.

I wonder about this particular tack, though, because industry is always in the crosshairs of environmentalists, however tenuous the link. Killing off caribou would be, probably is now, terrible public relations. Rapacious magnates would prefer to divert not attract attention. So – maybe. Too naïve can be as bad as too cynical.

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