Have your say

Re: Uranium bank useful idea (Jan.9). The Winnipeg Free Press correctly pointed out that nuclear power is the only practical alternative to fossil fuels for electricity generation for the world. With most potential hydro-electric sites already developed, only fossil fuels and nuclear power are capable of delivering electricity 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Far from being uneconomical, those countries with a high concentration of nuclear power generation, such as France and Sweden, have some of the lowest electricity prices. Ontario, in which over 50 per cent of the electricity is generated by nuclear power, has cheaper electricity rates than many other provinces and almost all U.S. states. The waste disposal problem is a political one, not a technical one. The latter has been solved and countries such as Finland and Sweden are going ahead with repositories. Scaremongering by anti-nuclear groups will make a site in North America harder to find but eventually a disposal site will be found.

VINCENT TUME

Society of Professional Engineers & Associates

Mississauga

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Before Dave Taylor (Nuclear power a dead end, Jan. 13) denounced nuclear power as a reasonable alternative to fossil fuels and excessively praised other renewable energy sources, he needed to consider the following.

When energy prices were climbing rapidly and economic prosperity seemed guaranteed, support for alternates like wind and solar appeared a logical way to appease environmentalists. With the drastic fall in those prices, however, the worst economic crisis in decades, a severe credit crunch and mass unemployment, the green-energy bubble has sharply deflated. Subsidies have been slashed, projects cancelled or postponed, private investors and banks have abandoned the sector and many green companies are nearly bankrupt. In the U.S., solar- and wind-power stocks had lost much of their value by early 2009.

By contrast France, which derives 80 per cent of its power from nuclear plants, is set to build more while Italy, Britain and even Ukraine, despite its Chernobyl legacy, are planning or already constructing 29 among them. Russia aims to double its electrical output from nuclear by 2020, and at least another half-dozen European countries are in the process of following suit.

The situation is similar in Asia where, during the next two decades, India is planning 40 new reactors, China intends to increase its nuclear generation capacity seven-fold and Japan aims to become 60 per cent nuclear by mid-century.

So the path that electrical generation is taking is obvious and unless other fossil fuel and hydro alternates can become more cost-efficient and reliable, they'll continue to bring up the rear.

Edward Katz

Winnipeg

Transit and the Games

Dave Williamson anticipates a message we're sending out about public transportation in Metro Vancouver in his Jan. 9 Round Trip column. With the 2010 Winter Games coming up, when public transit will be the main means for getting around the region, it's an important message. First, Williamson "lucked out" with his trip. He could have been fined for travelling more than one zone on a one-zone ticket and for accepting a ticket (whether it was given or sold) from someone who wasn't an authorized vendor.

You can only receive a ticket from an authorized vendor -- a ticket vending machine or a FareDealer (the Pharmasave at Vancouver International Airport). The law is there not just because it denies revenue to the transit system, but because people selling tickets on the street more often than not use the money for drugs, so one is actually feeding a problem rather than helping someone. There are plenty of places to get a free meal in Metro Vancouver. Also, the large signs Williamson mentions indicate the zones structure and a trip from Vancouver Airport to downtown Vancouver is a two-zone trip. One other point, which Williamson didn't mention but people need to know, is that as of Jan. 18, there will be a surcharge on travel out of the three stations near the airport (YVR-Airport, Sea Island Centre and Templeton). Tickets purchased through a ticket vending machine at those stations will be subject to a $5 Canada Line-YVR AddFare. The AddFare is part of the rail line's funding formula, and was approved recently by the TransLink Commissioner.

Drew Snider

South Coast British Columbia

Transportation Authority

The benefits of scanning

The introduction of airport scanners may prove to be a blessing in disguise, the potential solution to two problem areas. First, a simple upgrade in the quality of scanners may provide screening for potential health problems. Indeed, a holiday trip with a scan would be quite beneficial in more ways than one, cutting some health-care wait times at home.

Second, the numbers of scanning staff could be increased by giving an opportunity for individuals who are preoccupied with viewing their fellow human beings in various states of undress. This may be an inadvertent cure for voyeurism.

Every cloud has a silver lining. On a more serious note, though: I was wondering how these new scanners appeared in airports on such short notice. That should make us pause for thought. What is next?

Ed Labossiere

St. Adolphe

Ukrainian focus is wrong

Re: Ukrainian guards worse than Nazis, survivor says (Dec. 23). Ukraine, a republic of the Soviet Union and a province of Imperial Russia before the 1917 revolution, was a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Along with Poland and Belarus, Ukraine was rabidly anti-Semitic. Pogroms and murder were well underway a long time before the Nazis even existed.

When the German war machine marched through these countries, the anti-Soviet elements gladly and enthusiastically did the Nazis' bidding. A large number of Ukrainians, mainly from the western part of the country, joined the Waffen SS. Those who didn't make it into the Waffen SS usually became guards in the concentration camp system or auxiliary police. For reasons of deep prejudice and ethnocentric reasoning, a high proportion of Ukrainian guards were sadistic and brutal. But this sadism wasn't exclusively a Ukrainian phenomena. Many Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians as well as Russians exhibited rabid anti-Semitic behaviour during the Second World War. The French aggressively followed anti-Jewish legislation during the war and many pogroms took place in Vichy.

With recent examples of ethnic cleansing and mass murder taking place all over the globe, it appears human beings haven't advanced too far since the mid 1940s. But I believe we do everyone a disservice by trying to rewrite history because our feelings may be hurt. Revisionism is just political correctness in historical apparel.

DON HERMISON

Winnipeg

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The facts of the horrifying story of the German Nazi regime republished in your Dec. 23 article inappropriately portray Ukrainians as perpetrators rather than as victims of the events. Many accounts and books have been written that disprove allegations of Ukrainian support of the terror. They instead tell the truthful story of the many Ukrainian victims who died with Jews and others in the camps of the Holocaust.

Ukrainians are frequently victims of belittling attitudes and behaviours in many sectors of society and academia. Unbalanced "testimonials" such as this one distort the distinguished, humble and proud history of the victims and the survivors of the atrocities. Ukrainians in Manitoba, Canada and the world have shared the pain and devastation of the atrocities, as we move together toward a time of healing.

GLORIA MAYDANIUK

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 15, 2010 A11