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The Honourable Lloyd Axworthy
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Lester B. Pearson Building
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0G2

Dear Sir,

It has come to our attention that the federal government is using Canadian foreign aid to help sell Canadian nuclear technology to Thailand. Based on a report obtained from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), entitled “Energy for the Next Millennium: Thai-Canadian Nuclear Human Resources Development Linkage Project,” CIDA has granted nearly

U.S.$1 million to train nuclear personnel and to produce a series of videos and booklets in partnership with the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited — the Crown corporation that markets Canada’s nuclear reactors abroad.

High school students are the “target audience” for the Thai-language videos and booklets, the report says, because of their “ability to influence their peers, family members and others in their community” and because of the need to “gain a level of public acceptance that would allow the Government to proceed with a nuclear power program.”

In addition, the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) is spending $1 million of its own funds to establish Thailand’s first nuclear engineering department at the Bangkok-based Chulalongkhorn University. The report says that Thailand currently has “a complete lack of capability . . . to develop the engineering man-power for a nuclear power program.”

One of AECL’s partners, the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, contributed another $500,000 to copy and distribute the CIDA-AECL materials and to produce its own pro-nuclear television cartoons, newspaper ads, leaflets for villagers, public exhibits, and an essay-writing contest for high school students.

As a Thai-speaking person, I have reviewed the CIDA-AECL videos and booklets and found that they do not convey the truth about Canada’s experience with nuclear power and that they make numerous inaccurate and misleading claims. In response, Probe International has prepared the attached briefing to provide Thai citizens with more information about Canada’s experience with nuclear power.

Last October, I had the opportunity to share this information at a forum in Bangkok that was attended by more than 30 community leaders from six Asian countries. (Please also find attached a copy of their declaration of opposition to nuclear power in Asia.) I talked with Thai villagers, Buddhist monks, community leaders, academics, journalists, and citizens groups who are opposed to nuclear power and who want the Canadian government to stop pushing nuclear power in their country. They are not interested in propping up a dying industry. They want to make fully informed decisions about electricity choices based on the risks to their health, environment, livelihoods, and economy. Instead, they get propaganda from AECL, CIDA, and their own government.

The public opposition to this propaganda campaign by the Thai and Canadian governments was captured recently by the Bangkok Post (also attached). The author, Supara Janchitfah, writes in her article, “Full-power PR,” that Thai people “are aware they are being underestimated, patronized, and manipulated” by nuclear proponents.

The CIDA-AECL videos and booklets claim, for instance, that nuclear power is a trouble-free technology despite the fact that the world’s largest owner and operator of CANDU reactors, Ontario Hydro, recently had to shut down seven reactors because it cannot operate them safely or economically. They claim that nuclear waste can be safely disposed underground, even though AECL has failed to convince Canadians and the federal government that its proposal is safe. They claim that nuclear power is one of the few viable options Thailand has for meeting its future electricity needs, when, in reality, Thailand’s new private power producers are already taking advantage of the region’s abundant natural gas and cheaper, less risky, more efficient, and reliable generating technologies, such as combined cycle plants. They claim that nuclear power is an environmentally friendly solution to the buildup of greenhouse gases, when, in fact, every step of the nuclear fuel cycle contaminates air, water, soil, and food with radioactive pollutants that will threaten human health for generations. As the Economist argued recently, there are far cheaper and faster ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Asia, “given the falling renewable prices, the continued development of fuel cells, the discovery of ever larger oceans of gas, and the remarkable increases in the efficiency of gas-fired plants.”

CIDA’s partnership with AECL is indefensible. CIDA has paid for AECL’s distorted and inaccurate promotional materials. Nuclear power is uneconomic, plagued by technical problems, and saddled with decommissioning costs that no private company would be willing to accept without loan guarantees and other forms of protection from the government. In Ontario, after decades of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on nuclear power — neglecting the potential for clean generating technologies and for making electricity use and production more efficient — Ontario’s government is finally overhauling its electricity sector, based on the real world, rather than on a nuclear fantasy.

CIDA, on the other hand, is helping to keep the nuclear fantasy alive in Thailand. By misrepresenting the facts, downplaying the risks, and distorting the truth about nuclear power, CIDA is engaged in a cynical and shameless campaign to brainwash Thai citizens. It won’t work, and it must be stopped immediately.

As the minister responsible for CIDA, we ask that you put a halt to this abuse of public funds and assure Canadians that no more foreign aid will be used to promote Canada’s dying nuclear industry. CIDA’s mandate is to help alleviate poverty in Third World countries, not to mislead people about nuclear technology — technology that experience shows cannot be operated safely or economically.

Sincerely,

Grainne Ryder

Mekong Program Director
Probe International

cc. Denis Desautels, Auditor General of Canada
Ralph Goodale, Minister of Natural Resources Canada
Huguette Labelle, President, CIDA
Allen Kilpatrick, President, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited