REGINA - It was an analogy that developed in the 1970s as nuclear power plants were being developed around the world: Saskatchewan and its vast supply of unmined uranium would be to nuclear power what Saudi Arabia was to oil.
Over the last three decades the prediction has been realized and the province, better known for wide open spaces and wheat, has grown into the world's largest producer of the radioactive element.
But mining the raw material is as far as Saskatchewan has progressed in the nuclear cycle. Plans to develop a uranium refinery, build a nuclear reactor and even store nuclear waste have been shelved over the years in the face of stiff public opposition and concerns about feasibility.
Signs of change, however, are starting to emerge with a newly elected provincial government intent on moving the industry forward. The right-leaning Saskatchewan Party is not as fettered by internal conflict over the issue as its left-leaning NDP predecessor, and everything short of the nuclear waste storage idea appears to be back on the table.
"Who knows what opportunities lie ahead in this area for the province?'' Premier Brad Wall said recently. "I believe we can lead in this area, certainly in research and development.''
Saskatchewan first looked at developing the uranium industry in the 1940s and '50s under then premier Tommy Douglas as a means of diversifying its agricultural economy. In the 1970s the mining industry expanded rapidly thanks to several big finds in the north.
The province enjoyed a comfortable relationship with the industry until people began to question where the uranium was ending up, said Bill Waiser, a historian at the University of Saskatchewan.
"They were beginning to question the morality of it,'' Waiser says. "There are ecological concerns about it and `Are we facilitating the arms race unintentionally?'''
Former NDP premier Allan Blakeney, who oversaw the widespread expansion in the 1970s, recalls pitching uranium mining in Saskatchewan as something the province had to do for the sake of the rest of the world.
"As the world was developing and as the Third World was developing, there was going to be a need for significant new sources of power. One of those was uranium, and we had a moral duty to contribute,'' Blakeney says now.
"We have got virtually every power source in the world and there is one million of us, and we're saying, `Oh, those people over there shouldn't be generating their power over there using uranium.' This is not a very good piece of moral ground to stand on.''
Still public opposition prevented the industry from developing further than punching holes in the ground and bringing the ore to the surface.
In 1980 a proposal to build a uranium refinery in Warman, north of Saskatoon, was killed because of the impact it might have on the largely Mennonite community.
In the early 1990s both the Progressive Conservative government and the NDP government were in talks with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to build a Candu 3 reactor in the province, but the idea was shelved because of cost and lack of need.
In the mid-1990s the Meadow Lake Tribal Council, an organization representing several northern First Nations, briefly studied the idea of storing nuclear waste on its land but backed down after widespread protests.
"It caused a lot of controversy and a lot of difficult feelings,'' Vern Bachiu, general manager with the tribal council's development corporation, recalls today.
With a new government in power and a premier who talks about nuclear opportunities every chance he gets, people on both sides of the debate are watching the situation closely.
While the previous NDP government had expressed interest in refining uranium in the province, Steve McLellan, CEO of the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce, figures the business-friendly Saskatchewan Party will take a "hard look'' at attracting a company to do it.
"We, particularly, are quite optimistic,'' McLellan says. "Anything that adds value to things that are mined here is great for business.''
Some, like former NDP deputy premier Dwain Lingenfelter, say Saskatchewan's wide open spaces make it ideal for every step of the cycle, including power generation and waste storage. While conventional reactors are widely seen as producing too much power for the province's needs, Lingenfelter argues Saskatchewan could become a power hub and supply energy to the rest of Canada and the United States.
"The first thing that has to happen is the government in the province has to say to the world that they're interested, which hasn't happened to this point,'' says Lingenfelter, who is now an executive with the Calgary-based oil company Nexen.
"I think it takes more than governments saying, `Yeah, we are sort of in favour of it, but we will see how it goes.'''
Wall has expressed interest in research being done around small-scale nuclear reactors that would produce power at a level more suitable to the province's needs. He's also talked about the idea of developing a research reactor such as the one in Chalk River, Ont., which produces medical isotopes.
Ann Coxworth, with the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, acknowledges that the current political situation in the province does not favour the anti-nuclear movement.
"I think we have quite a struggle ahead of us, so there is a lot of work to be done,'' she says. "The forces that want to go down that nuclear path are pretty powerful right now.''
Coxworth is worried that those who oppose nuclear energy may have been lulled into a sense of complacency over the last few years.
"When these issues were being quite actively discussed -- say in the 1970s -- the public got quite well informed about the issues,'' she says.
"We haven't had to think about it over the past many years.''
