PQ confirms it’ll close Gentilly via Montreal Gazette

Quebec’s only nuclear power plant raised fearsafter health anomalies reported in its vicinity

Nearly 30 years after it went into operation, it appears the days are numbered for Quebec’s only operating nuclear power plant.

A spokesman for the Parti Québécois said the newly elected government will go ahead with a plan to close Gentilly-2 in Bécancour. The party has wanted to do it since December 2009, Éric Gamache said.

“There is no indication that we will not respect that position,” Gamache told The Gazette Tuesday.

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Within five kilometres of a nuclear power plant, there was a 220 per cent increase in leukemia cases among children, the study found.

“If they had found a 20 per cent increase, that would have been worrying. A 40 per cent increase would have been really worrying,” British radiation biologist Dr. Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radiation in the environment, says in the film. “A 220 per cent increase was almost unbelievable.”

But other studies have not found higher leukemia rates near nuclear power plants, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says the reason for the increased leukemia rate among children around German nuclear power plants is “unclear.”

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Dr. Éric Notebeart, a professor in medicine at the Université de Montréal and a board member of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, said Tuesday that children and young families should not live close to Gentilly-2.

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