Bob Hunter

® strictly personal ®

AT FIRST I didn’t believe this, but serious moves are
afoot to build a nuclear power plant in British Columbia.

It would be the first nuke in
Western Canada.

Public word of these
manoeuvres surfaced in the Fort
Nelson News a couple of months
ago but was not picked up by the
wire services. Maybe that's the
excuse why we didn’t hear
anything about it through any of
the Lower Mainland media
outlets, until now.

Dick Neufeld, the mayor of
Fort Nelson — famous, I sup-
pose, mainly because of the wolf
kill program mounted from there
by MLA Tony Brummet’s bud-
dies — announced on Sept. 10
that he had asked federal
authorities in Ottawa to consider
building an experimental nuclear
power plant.

It wasn’t a maverick action on
Mayor Neufeld’s part, either.
The Fort Nelson council duely

| considered an application for the
construction of just a power
plant.

I called Neufeld to see what the
hell was going on. It turns out he
had decided not to run for mayor
again, so by the time this is
published there will be a new
mayor and probably several new
aldermen.

Nevertheless, the application

remains on the table. The reasons
for making the application re-
mains. And Ottawa is still active-
ly considering it. Well, not only
actively, Let us say, hungrily.
, If the feds could get a nuke
happening in B.C., it would send
a shiver of ecstasy through the
ranks of Canda’s justifiably
beleaguered nuclear power in-
dustry.

Frank Oberle, the federal
minister for science and techno-
logy, also happens to be the Tory
MP for the vast northern riding

that includes Fort Nelson.

As Mayor Neufeld put it, ‘‘The
feds are looking to put small
reactors in place on a freebee
basis.’’

In other words, it comes down
to another federal government
scam to keep the Eastern Cana-
dian nuclear industry alive,
despite the obvious fact that
nukes are falling from favor in
every sane quarter of the world.

I expressed astonishment that
he should make a proposal to
build a nuclear power plant in the
wake of the disaster at Cher-
nobyl, where the anticipated
number of deaths directly due to
fallout has risen to a staggering
(and probably still conservative)
500,000.

You may have heard mutter-
ings during the last year that a
string of small nuclear reactors
was being considered to provide
power for the new, expanded
DEW’ Line across the Northwest
Territories.

It seems Ottawa is willing to
consider sites in the southern
provinces as well. As Mayor
Neufeld points out, Fort Nelson
isn’t that far from the NWT
border.

He also admitted that there
would be ‘‘a lot of discussion’’
among the citizens of Fort
Nelson before such a_ bizarre
move as building a nuclear reac-
tor could go ahead.

Yet — you guessed it — Fort
Nelson has good reason to look
to such a desperate alternative.

“We are sitting on top of the
largest gas field in a province
which enjoys some of the
cheapest power rates in the coun-
try,"’ Neufeld explains. Yet B.C.
Hydro still, has Fort Nelson
categorized as a ‘‘Zone 1"

Cigarettes stolen

ABOUT 100 cartons of cigarettes,
valued at $2,400, were stolen from
a North Vancouver gas station
recently. .

The theft occurred during the

early morning hours of Nov. 14 at
the Shell Service Station at 18th
Street and Lonsdale Avenue.

North Vancouver RCMP is con-
tinuing its investigation.

Cordially invite you for an afternoon Tea Seminar
*Voyage to Treasure* on Tuesday, November 25,
1986 —- 2pm at Canyon Gardens, North Vancouver.
Tea arid Danish will be served. Reservation limited.

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A sincere THANK YOU from
ANNE MACDONALD

“ To the many voters whose support on election day
3 elected me to the Schoo! Board representing the District
of North Vancouver.

region, which means that in-
dustrial and commercial users in
that community must pay as
much as 50 per cent more for
diesel-generated power as oppos-
ed to natural gas.

Fort Nelson wants to be in-
cluded in the regular power grid,
which would reduce electricity
costs by 30 per cent, bringing
them into line with the rest of the
province, but Hydro has
countered with a proposa! that
would only lower rates by eight
per cent.

Frustrated by this kind of
second-class citizen treatment, |
the mayor and council of Fort
Nelson decided to take a hard
look at Frank Oberle’s offer of a
free experimental "’Slowpoke”’
nuclear reactor, as this particular
version of aCANDU is called. |

Give Fort Nelson what it
wants, Hydro. Keep nukes out of
B.C., please.

A footnote:

You are wondering why you |
didn’t hear about this sooner,
aren’t you? Especially since The
Vancouver Sun has been bragg-
ing in its in-house ads about how
its nuclear coverage, particularly
of Chernobyl, has been ‘‘second
to none.’’

An anti-nuke group called
Earth Embassy says its members
have been monitoring coverage
of Chernobyl in the Lower
Mainland dailies, and found that
The Globe ran a total of 1,715
ec’umn inches of stories directly
related to Chernoby! compared
to The Sun's 1,223 column in-
ches.

In the 26 weeks following the
disaster, The Globe devoted 491
more column inches to the sub-
ject than The Sun. Also, The
Globe had 21 front page stories
compared to The Sun’s 14.

Remember, you read it here |
first. And, I’m sure, last.

™ And special thanks to the following:

fa —ail che hardworking, and enthusiastic volunteers
y belonging to the Citizens Association for Responsible
Education, (C.A.R.E.) who endorsed my candidacy.
— Steelhead Business Products Ltd.
— Ram Hira and Roxanna Parson, nominators
f — Scrutineer observers, Drivers & Leaflet droppers,
and friends, family, and friends of friends.

Dining & Dancing at

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