Mr. Speaker, I would like to answer the question by expanding on reasons why we should not be going the nuclear route.
We have to look at the total cost of the nuclear option. One of the costs of the nuclear option is the storage of waste. There was talk of storing nuclear waste in Pinawa, Manitoba. Even though it is a fairly sparsely populated area, people were outraged. They were organized. They were going to stop this.
Where are they going to put the waste? No matter where they try to put it in this country, people are going to be protesting and trying to stop it. That is a huge cost here.
The waste has to be stored for a long time. We cannot do what the Russians were doing a number of years ago, simply dumping the waste into the oceans. We cannot do something like that.
Why would they want to embark on an avenue where the costs are huge and where they cannot get public buy-in on the area of waste? Where are they going to get buy-in today, in 2010, to situate a nuclear plant? No matter where they try to do it in this country, people are going to try to stop it. Now they are looking at a decade, maybe, before they can get these plants on stream.
If they were to spend that time on wind or solar or developing the east-west power grid, we could have much safer renewable energy on stream in half the time and not have to worry about storage or damage.
I have indicated we have had 81 nuclear accidents in my lifetime. We have had zero hydroelectric power accidents. That is a very compelling argument for going the route of traditional hydroelectric development or wind and solar versus nuclear, which is just riddled with problems.