Premier Tim Houston scared many Nova Scotians with his threats of undoing the moratoria on Uranium mining and fracking and with his under-the-table approval of a Lithium exploration license to an Australian company in SW Nova Scotia. Citizens expressed their outrage about the wide range of the premier’s dictatorial interventions. As far as these minerals, they were never mentioned as part of his very recent election platform.

There are reasons we have moratoria for the exploration and production of Uranium and fracked natural gas: these activities would lead to proven health hazards. The premier has made clear that he thinks that those who express anger and concern about his initiatives are just ‘special interest groups’. What he means is that he accuses these folks to be in the way of exploration, which he deems is a necessity because of the changed situation in the US. What he willingly ignores is that these ‘special interest groups’ (none of which he named) have the well-being of the whole population at heart, whereas his elephant-in-the-china-cabinet-approach only benefits special-interest industry sectors and not our wholesome future.

The political situation in the US is very dangerous and I do agree that such acute danger may necessitate a change in policy direction that might not have been formulated in an election platform. But is what the Premier proposes supported by science and – even in changed times – by economic necessity?

Let’s take look at each of the mentioned resources: Uranium, Lithium and Fracking for natural gas.

Uranium. Nova Scotia has Uranium. It occurs naturally in the shallow subsurface around the granite bodies that exist in the southern and northern mainland. Uranium is a radioactive (unstable) element and decays to Lead (stable) through fourteen isotopic changes over a few billion years. Somewhere in that isotopic chain sits unstable Radon222, a gas. Prolonged exposure to Radon222 is a significant health hazard. The Nova Scotia department of Natural Resources has published a Radon Risk map that every citizen can examine. It’s especially important to air your basements if you live in an area with high risk of exposure to radon gas. DNR will loan you Radon measuring equipment to assess your risk. It may also occur in your groundwater if you’re on a well. Run all your drinking water through a carbon filter to address any of these risks. As recently as 2019, DNR executive director Don James stated publicly that Uranium exploration would not result in additional necessary knowledge regarding Radon risk and that exploring for Uranium itself had no additional benefits in this regard.

Does Nova Scotia have a large Uranium reserve? We don’t really know, because Nova Scotia has had a ban on Uranium exploration for decades. But we do know that our reserve is completely insignificant compared to that of Saskatchewan, which has about 10% of the world’s Uranium reserves, the world’s second largest reserve outside Kazakhstan. Why does that matter? Because no other Uranium reserve in Canada would ever be remotely competitive with that of Saskatchewan. So promoting Nova Scotia Uranium as a significant resource is balderdash. Should we know how much Uranium we have and where it’s located? Yes – because it’s a health hazard, so we should always do that kind of research. Did the premier spout his opinion about Uranium as an economic mineral because he wants to attract research funding? If so, why didn’t he say so? If not, then his ignorance about global production and demand is embarrassing at least.

Saskatchewan happens to also have one of the world’s largest Potash reserves. Potassium, a key element of Potash, is one of three essential nutrients for agriculture (the other two are Nitrogen and Phosphorus). There are only a few very large potash deposits in the world and one of them is in Saskatchewan. A decent-sized one is in New Brunswick. About 12 years ago, the SK potash corporation bought the NB mine and promptly closed it, laying off a significant percentage of the working population in the Sussex NB area. I was in that mine once, it’s massive and impressive and I’m sure it’s now all flooded. Why did the mine close? Because the SK company didn’t want to have to deal with competition within Canada. It was more attractive to put a few hundred people out of work and thus kill the competition – so simple! Does anyone have any idea what would happen if Nova Scotia would start producing Uranium? Right? I rest my case. Nova Scotia Uranium is not now and never will be economic on any scale whatsoever and that’s leaving out whether it’s desirable to produce Uranium or not.

Lithium

Canada is estimated to have 3.6% of the world’s Lithium reserves, almost all of which are in central Canada. Nova Scotia is a tiny landmass and will never be able to contribute more than just a smidgeon of Lithium to the world’s reserves. Lithium is an essential element for rechargeable car batteries but, unlike the central Canada deposits, we are nowhere near battery plants and never will be. Should Nova Scotia ‘do its bit’ and contribute to building up the reserve of this critical mineral? Given that we have a minuscule amount no matter how much we’ll explore, that seems foolish. The areas where Lithium may occur in Nova Scotia overlap with the SW Nova Biosphere Reserve and the Annapolis valley, our one and only significant food growing area. We have one abandoned Lithium mine in SW Nova Scotia: Brazil Lake, frequently promoted by Nova Scotia geologist John Wightman (who promotes lifting the Uranium ban in the same breath, making him somewhat less credible to me). Australian (!) Manhattan Corporation was just given an exploration license for Lithium in SW Nova Scotia. Given global occurrences, this doesn’t make economic sense to me.

Fracking

Fracking is a sophisticated technical process by which natural gas can be released from so-called ‘tight’ rocks. Tight rocks are rocks with little porosity and permeability. Porosity is defined as the amount of holes in a rock. A loose sandstone has a lot of holes, it has high porosity. In order for a gas or a liquid to flow through that rock, the holes need to be connected, this is called permeability. If a rock has low porosity and permeability, it’s called ‘tight’. A tight rock that holds hydrocarbons (oil or gas) would have been ignored in the past, but fracking technology has made those hydrocarbons accessible. Here is a short video that explains the technology.

A recent letter in the Chronicle Herald by John Budreski also explains the process well. What mr Budreski didn’t tell his readers was how many holes you need to drill to access hydrocarbons in tight rocks: the well spacing may be as little as 50 meters. He also didn’t mention the problem of waste water. Fracking requires massive amounts of water, with added chemicals, and you can’t just release that waste water into any natural water body or you’d poison the environment, which is what is happening in Wyoming, a State that is still allowing fracking on a massive scale, but is now trying to regulate it.

Wastewater was the problem the first fracked well in Nova Scotia (on the Noel shore) faced: the company drilled that well before the Province had regulations in place for what to do with the waste products, then these waste products turned out to contain toxic elements, leading to a long-lasting problem of where to store it and for how long etc. Other than chemicals that the companies add to the injection water, the fracking process also releases naturally occurring chemicals from the rocks. The areas that are of interest for producing natural gas through fracking are relatively close to granite bodies and that means that the waste water has a good chance of containing radioactive Uranium and its decay elements. Oops! Aside from this, I do think it’s counterproductive to start talking about producing hydrocarbons in a time when we all agree that we need to get away from fossil fuels.

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Canada is a vast country. Nova Scotia is a small peninsula far from markets, accessible only over a vulnerable isthmus that separates us – and our one industrial harbour – from the mainland. We do have the second highest population density of any province or territory, so there is a higher chance that Nova Scotians are negatively affected by resource development. If the premier intends to boost earth resource exploration in order for Canada to become less dependent on the US, then he picked the wrong ones. Who does he listen to?

Should all Canadian jurisdictions contribute to the effort to make Canada less dependent on US resources? Yes, I think we should. And I acknowledge that critical resources are to some extent moving targets: 100 years ago we still considered coal a critical resource, now not so much. Then we got a gold rush, which still lingers off and on. Then there was an offshore gas hype, which petered out quickly because our offshore is not the Gulf of Mexico after all. Now there are new resources that are needed for the new, green economy. Maybe we should have an informed public discussion, including experts from the Department of Natural Resources before we race head-over-heels into the next adventure. Maybe our premier wouldn’t then blunder again into a topic that he’s clueless about, because that’s truly embarrassing.