The Electricity Daily
August 29, 2003

A feisty Sierra Club of Canada has pulled off a cyber-prank aimed at highlighting its opposition to Canada.s ambitions to join the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) project. A private-sector corporation, Iter Canada, with official encouragement, is trying to attract the fusion energy project to the site of the 3,740 MW Darlington nuclear station, owned by Ontario Power Generation Inc. on Lake Ontario, 50 miles east of Toronto.

In early August, the Sierra Club established a "Stop Iter" website, http://www.iter.ca. Club nuclear campaigner Dave Martin said, "We were surprised to find [the site] available as an Internet domain unsecured by Iter Canada. Iter Canada neglected to purchase the domain. We expect our site will soon pull more traffic than Iter Canada.s official corporate site."

The Sierra Club rogue site aims to foment a groundswell of Canadian opposition to federal government multibillion dollar subsidies for the construction of the Iter tokamak fusion project in Canada. "Scarce tax dollars should not be wasted on this fusion reactor . it is purely experimental and will not produce any electricity. Even the supporters of Iter admit that a fusion reactor to generate electricity is at least 35 to 50 years away, if it ever works," argues Martin.

Joining the descendents of John Muir in the anti-Iter cacophony are three high-profile Canadian green groups: David Suzuki Foundation of Vancouver, Alberta-based Pembina Institute, and Greenpeace Canada. Leaders of the coalition wrote Herb Dhaliwal, Canada.s natural resources minister, in May bitterly opposing the expected federal outlays for construction of Iter, and favoring instead a strengthened Canadian commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.

Dhaliwal, in a reply in July, acknowledged that Ottawa.s financial commitment to the Darlington Iter option weakened following the announcement of aggressively competing alternative Iter sites in Cadarache, France; Vandellos, Spain; and Rokkasho, Japan. Dhaliwal said the final Chretien cabinet decision on subsidies for the Darlington Iter is expected in mid September.

Iter Canada might be entitled to challenge the SCC cyber- prank by submitting a complaint under the Canadian Internet Regulatory Authority Name Dispute Resolution Policy of November 2001. But the lobby group of industrialists, financiers, and former Ontario Hydro and OPG functionaries that make up Iter Canada seems unflustered by the activist cyber-prank and mischief theater.

Iter Canada communications director Laura Ferguson said, "Iter Canada has taken no action with respect to the domain name for the website http://www.iter.ca." She pointed to a list of ten Iter-related websites around the world, apart from the SCC prank site. All 10 of the sites on the Iter Canada list, starting with http://www.iter.org , appear supportive of the international governmental negotiations on Iter design, siting and regulation comprising Canada, China, Europe, Japan, Russia, the United States, and, potentially, South Korea. [SS]