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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1980-07-16, Page 2THE PEACEFUL MAITLAND MUiELI WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1980 ONTARIO Serving Brussels and the surrounding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario By McLean Bros. Publishers'imited Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each. BLUE RIBBON AWARD 1979 Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston St. Sam's dream Brussels Post Huron still cares Apathy is not yet prevalent in all circles--at least in Huron County it isn't, when it comes to helping your neighbour out. • Following a fire on Friday at a farm owned by Donald Perrie which destroyed his haying equipment, the neighbours were there the very next day helping out with their own equipment and soon had 1600 bales of hay put away in another barn. These days when you think of people standing idly by on the street, watching while their neighbour gets mugged rather than attempting to help, it's good to know that in Huron County when a man is down his neighbours will help get him back on his feet. The Perries have put a card of thanks in this week's Post to express their appreciation for what those men did and the Post would like to congratulate those who helped, for proving that the good neighbour policy still exists. Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley If you're so smart... so smart, sister, why are you reading that trashy weekend magazine?" Fortunately, as they say, cooler heads prevailed, and my wife and I were once more pried apart before we could injure each other. Please turn to page 20. You won't find much hotter a topic around these days than atomic power. In any group you can likely start a good argument just by mentioning the subject. And so. Ted Johns staked out a pretty hard task for himself when he decided to write a play about atomic power in general and the } Bruce Nuclear Power Development in I particular. He'd taken on a similar controversial subject in 1978 when tackled the Huron County Teachers Strike. He came off looking like a genius in that one when he seemed to make both sides laugh at theinselves. Could he do it again? Well from early reaction to his new play St. Sam of the Nuke Pile he seems to have pulled it off again. People from both sides of the argument seem to- feel that the play supports their view. He has performed the magic act of making both sides confirm their prejudices while seeing a bit of the other side of the topic. If there is one clear verdict out of the play it seems to be that we have to live with the Bruce plant and other nuclear plants already built, so we might as well make the best of it. The character after which the play takes its name is Sam, the local entrepreneur who wants to see the waste heat from the nuclear plant used instead of dumped out into the lake. He'd like to see it used to heat greenhouses and fish farms and even factories. He can see the Kincardine area becoming a "Burlington of the Bruce." BURLINGTON OF THE BRUCE Now whether everyone else wants to see Kincardine become a Burlington of the Bruce is open to question but whether you are a pro or anti-nuclear supporter the question of making use of waste heat seems an important one. Two millions gallons a minute of hot water go through the Bruce plant. The water is drawn in from Lake Huron, heated to steam to drive turbines then flushed out to the lake again. The complicated nuclear process for creating electricity makes use of only 27 per cent of the heat created. The rest is wasted. More than wasted, it may even be doing damage by increasing the water temperature of the lake, for all we know. It only makes sense to make use of that wasted heat in these times of energy crisis. Yet nobody seemed interested in doing that until Sam McGregor came along. Sam, the St. Sam of the title of the play „ caused some scepticism right Off the bat because he Was tunnin$ for parliament when he got an announcement of the government's' decision to create a pilot project to study his plans. He held a Toronto press conference' and was Surrounded by government bigwigs and then tried to say the project had nothing whatever to do with his, political campaign. In the long run, of course, it didn't. Sam lost the election but the study went on and today -the first greenhouses under the study are producing vegetables, produced with heat from oil furnaces set up to simulate the heating which would be provided by the nuclear-heated water from the power plant. STILL INTACT Sam's vision is still intact. He still dreams of hundreds of acres of greenhouses and millions of pounds of fish from, the fish farms. He sees industrial plants locating in , the area to make use of the steam from the nuclear plant. He sees the entire economy of the province shifting to make use of the -by products of the Bruce plant. Because of this vision one of the characters in the play suggests he should be a saint. If he can pull it off perhaps he should be. Ontario Hydro would have been quite willing to throw. away 73 per cent of the heat it produces while going along building ever more nuclear plants. Businessmen were sceptical about the project. The government had to be pushed to get interested at all (could that be why Sam took advantage of a political campaign to get the government to agree to the pilot project thinking it might buy them an extra seat in the legislature?) Sam admitts that it's been years of hard work selling his idea to the bureacracy and technocracy of the many bodies he's had to deal with. After seeing the play one night last week (he liked it,' by the way) he said Ted Johns did a good job of capturing the :frustration he's 'felt trying to convince people his ideas were sound. POTENTIAL PROBLEMS There are potential problems of course. What happens for instance if Sam does get his way and his project goes ahead? There is the effect of a huge new development on a rural, area, the loss of farmland etc. What happens in 20 or 30 years when the nuclear plant is closed down because of old age and the cheap heat ends? Still when one looks at the energy being wasted at the Bruce plant, at the Pickering plant, at plants around the world it makes nuclear power even more of a sick joke It is one thing to take the risks of nuclear power to get an efficient use of energy. When you see the wasted potential that nobody seems ready to use it's quite another matter. For better or worse we've got nuclear plants. Like St. Sam maybe we should be trying to de something to make the best of the Situation. "If you're so smart, why don't you write something intelligent and literary?" That's what a lady said to me, after reading in that dumb article that I was a graduate in honor English. My immediate response was, "If you're