Nuclear Table Calgary Alberta 2023 Marda Gras - Stand Up For Nuclear & Canadians For Nuclear Energy
Marda Gras in Calgary hosted our 3rd annual Stand Up For Nuclear table! (This is a re-post as my original release had no audio after 58:00.)
This is a community street festival, and I registered to participate as a volunteer for Canadians For Nuclear Energy (https://C4NE.ca). Stand-Up For Nuclear Power (https://standupfornuclear.org) also helped me coordinate with the co-host, Jessica.
Gummy Bears were featured prominently at our table, because a gummy bear has the same volume as a nuclear fuel pellet, and so a "gummy bear" (of uranium) can displace the combustion of 1 ton of coal. We handed out little bags of gummy bears, which included a slip of paper explaining this fact.
We also sold T-SHIRTS. Each year the shirt experience was different:
2021 - Didn't know how to have inexpensive shirts printed. Sold shirts at-cost for $50 each. Sold very few.
2022 - Thought I could sell shirts virtually, by directing people to https://nuclear.myspreadshop.ca which resulted in a single shirt sale. The price was zero-profit-to-me, $30 each. So they were affordable, but no one at a street festival wanted to order off a website... people want to walk away with the shirts not wait a month for them to be shipped.
2023 - Successfully sold 14 shirts for $20 each (no-profit), out a stock of 16 split evenly among men's M, L, XL. (Only 2 medium were left over.) About 3 people asked for 2XL of which I had none. They were printed in Calgary at https://budgetpromotion.ca. Like most places, double-sided printing costs more, but Budget Promotion was still able to provide shirts at $20 /each. I expect the only way this worked was because they are in Calgary also, and I was able to drive to their warehouse to pick up the shirts myself. I would have printed 2x as many shirts (and presumably be left with extra inventory) except I missed the email from Budget Promotions when the told me the shirts were ready for pickup. So in 2023 many people asked for Thorium shirts but no one was able to buy any.
Aside from sharing our knowledge and opinions about nuclear power, we had about 20 fliers. Ranging from United Nations ECE study of lifecycle impact of various energy sources, to vendor fliers, to SUFN pamphlets. (And the gummy bears count too, since they had an info slip included with each bag.)
If you're interested in hosting a nuclear table at a community festival feel free to contact C4NE or SUFN or myself to see if we can be of (non-financial) assistance.
For my community's table I paid out of my own pocket, as a fun thing I get to do once a year. Maybe one year I'll increase the cost of shirts to cover the cost of the table at the festival, but for now I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible.
The table cost $250 CAD, which is a non-profit price. Thanks to C4NE for allowing me to use their name when renting the table space.
I purchased a tent ("Outsunny 10' x 10' Pop Up Gazebo, Foldable Canopy Tent with Carrying Bag with Wheels, 4 Leg Weight Bags and 3-Level Adjustable Height for Outdoor Gard") for $180 from Amazon Canada. That's been amortized over 2 years so far, but I expect it will last as long as I can.
Gummy Bears were about $100 (Amazon in 2022, Costco in 2023).
General Advice:
Prepare the gummy bear bags in advance. It took me and my wife hours to put the info-slips and gummy bears into the tiny bags. Not something you can do while talking to people, and also would have looked kinda gross and not have been sanitary.
Contact vendors. Some vendors sent me fliers for free. Many provided PDFs that were not available on their websites.
Be ready to collect email addresses. I can now reach out to people and direct them to C4NE and SUFN. Also, I expect a lot of local activism on the nuclear-front in the coming years. We just set out a pen and paper and it turned out to be invaluable.
We were asked for our opinions of some political matters and we were kind of caught off-guard. Not too worried about having great answers, but it was stuff we should have seemed obvious in retrospect. How will you answer if you're asked your opinion about any federal /provincial /local politician? Any vendor? Any reactor design? Any means of dealing with used fuel?
Don't worry too much about angry anti-nuclear folks. We've done this 3 years and it just hasn't (yet) been an issue. Mostly we're there to answer good-faith questions and distribute information.
If you live in Calgary consider joining us next year. If you're pro-nuclear and enjoy attending street festivals (as I do) it really is a fun way to spend one day a year.