Impacts on Brighton

The proposed nuclear facility at Wesleyville will add significant development pressures not just to Port Hope, but throughout Northumberland County. Parts of Brighton are within the 50km radius from the proposed plant, and we are downwind, making any problems at the plant a potential threat to Brighton's safety. But further, this plant seems not to meet the test of being necessary or superior to alternatives: an equivalent investment in renewable energy and storage in our region would distribute energy generation, and the economic benefits thereof, throughout our region, with none of the risk. Distributed systems are inherently more resilient, and do not concentrate wealth the way that centralized systems do. Renewable energy systems are cheaper to install, but further, are much faster to install; we could be replacing a generation of solar and wind generators before a new nuclear system comes online in the first place. So while the current proposal has distributed costs (development pressures) and risks (being downwind from a nuclear plant) that affect my community, it has little in terms of distributed rewards; meanwhile, investing in renewables would have the opposite effect, with distributed benefits (local power generation and resiliency, jobs and economic impacts) and no real risks or costs.