South of the border, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain is pushing for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030.

Here in Canada, a similar nuclear boom is being proposed in Saskatchewan, where privately operated Bruce Power announced on June 17 that it is doing a study on the feasibility of building two 1,000-megawatt reactors to help meet the province’s electricity needs.

Premier Gordon Campbell’s 2007 B.C. Energy Plan ruled out similar nuclear generation here in three words: "No nuclear power."

However, this hasn’t stopped speculation. After B.C. Hydro president and CEO Bob Elton spoke at a downtown Vancouver Board of Trade event on May 28, the first of several general questions submitted asked whether or not nuclear generation would form part of B.C.’s overall energy picture.

"One reason that it’s not feasible politically is because it has been ruled out by the government energy plan," Elton replied. "I will give you a personal opinion. If the government decided that nuclear power was the right thing, I think it would have to be done by a company other than B.C. Hydro. My very strong view is that nuclear power is something that should be done by companies that are expert at that. The risks involved with nuclear power are such that you want a board of directors who are focused just on that."

During his talk, Elton said that "every electricity system has to be based on a solid wave of delivering large amounts of capacity."

"Which means that whenever you need it, you have it," he said. "And the choices today in the world, given today’s technology, are hydro, gas, coal, and nuclear."

Nuclear opponents cite accidents and radioactive-waste disposal issues as reasons to halt nuclear-power generation outright. However, U.K.–based scientist James Lovelock dismisses this in his 2006 book, The Revenge of Gaia. According to Lovelock, the earth is not a passive place of recreation but a living entity (Gaia) whose living organisms are all interconnected. And Lovelock states that the risks posed by nuclear power pale when compared to the consequences of the earth heating up due to global warming.

"I believe nuclear power is the only source of energy that will satisfy our demands and yet not be a hazard to Gaia and interfere with its capacity to sustain a comfortable climate," Lovelock wrote. "This is mainly because nuclear reactions are millions of times more energetic than chemical reactions. The most energy available from an energy reaction such as burning carbon in oxygen is about nine kilowatt hours per kilogram. The nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms to form helium gives several million times as much, and the energy from splitting uranium is greater still."

SFU professor and author Mark Jaccard told the Georgia Straight: "Humanity should keep going with nuclear power, but only tentatively, until it has solved the radioactive-waste storage issue."

Jaccard said nuclear power will make sense in some jurisdictions over the next 20 years and not in others.

"It will depend on whether or not you already have sites for placing a nuclear plant," he said. "In other words, Ontario plans to expand the capacity of nuclear that it has by building on the same sites where it already has plants. That is the same for the U.K., Finland, France, and so on."

Jaccard said keeping nuclear on the radar and working out the problems is his "preference", while his "prediction" is that "it would be very difficult to put a new nuclear plant somewhere in a rich country in a new site."

"That said, maybe you can find a site in Saskatchewan," Jaccard said of the Bruce Power announcement. "I don’t mean to say that facetiously. You might be able to find a site in Saskatchewan, but you don’t want to build the nuclear plant too far away from everything, because then you have got to build long transmission lines, and even those things are difficult to get approved these days. So this is the predictive side: it is going to be very difficult to site a nuclear plant anywhere but in a place where there already was one."

Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn did not respond to an interview request.