Think you can predict what might happen in 4.5 billion years or even a mere 24,000 years from now?
If you are of sound mind, your answer would likely be, “of course not.”
Yet, there are those in our midst who are paid to convince us (with a straight face), that it is safe to permanently bury, in deep underground repositories, highly radioactive and toxic nuclear fuel wastes. Some of these substances will be dangerous to living organisms for unimaginable and incomprehensible spans of time. Worse yet, these folks are actively pursuing the development and construction of such monstrosities.
Can a human-made underground nuclear waste repository completely isolate and contain long-lived radioactive poisons for the time required to render them inert and harmless? Any one who says it can, needs a period of serious reflection.
Consider Plutonium 239, one of the components of irradiated nuclear fuel waste, with a “half-life” of 24,000 years. (meaning one half will have decayed in that period of time, but the remainder will continue to be as radioactive and as toxic as it was when it was removed from the reactor).
Try to contemplate those staggering periods of time. Think about the changes in the earth that have occurred over the same eons of time in the past. Speculate over the possible kinds of geological changes which could occur in the future. And, finally, think about the damage to health and safety that these radioactive and toxic substances can do when they come into contact with the external environment.
Consider the human populations which might be nearby when these invisible radioactive substances inevitably work their way out of the repository and into the surrounding land,
If our far future descendants should be unlucky enough to inhale airborne Plutonium particles, which remain radioactive in the body, and highly damaging to the lungs and other human organs, the onset of lung cancer is a distinct possibility.
Or, if iodine-129 (half-life of 17 million years) escapes from the repository and is ingested from milk, fruits and vegetables, the primary health risk is thyroid cancer.
And so on.
Why, you might ask, would anyone even consider creating underground nuclear waste garbage dumps? Why would they even take the risk of sticking it to their own descendents? Why are they not pursuing a truly scientific way of dealing with these substances?
Very good questions. Perhaps the answer is as simple as the fact that we humans are pretty adept at fouling our own nest and that we always take the easy way out. But, actually, it is far more complicated then that.
In 2011, the ongoing nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, Japan, is definitely putting a crimp in the major expansion plans of the world’s nuclear establishment. Its efforts to create a world-wide nuclear energy “renaissance” has become increasingly elusive. But even prior to the accidents at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the public was already leery about the concept of permanent underground burial of nuclear reactor waste.
As the nuclear waste inventories continue to increase at the reactor sites, the industry continues to pursue its “out of site, out of mind” underground burial approach. The nuclear advocates, including many a duped politician, believe that if they can convince us that burial is the ultimate solution to the waste problem, then, it hopes, there will be greater public acceptance of more nuclear energy. But, how they can do this in the face of the Fukushima tragedy and the likelihood of accidents and terrorist attacks in an increasingly unstable world, is beyond me.
In the United States, construction of a major repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was finally terminated by the Obama Administration. After a fortune was spent on site exploration, it was deemed to be geologically unsuitable, e.g. surface water intrusion, seismic activity. A “Blue Ribbon” Commission was established to study the issue, and with the usual lack of imagination, concluded that the underground burial method should proceed, hopefully hosted by volunteer communities.
In Canada, during the early 1980’s, efforts by the Crown Corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (AECL) to locate suitable sites in Cambrian Shield granite rock formations, were thwarted by objections from nearby communities. Later, the underground burial idea was put on hold after a lengthy Federal Environmental Assessment Review Process.
The current Canadian effort is under the aegis of the nuclear industry dominated Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). It is currently undertaking a new site selection effort and is handing out large sums of money to some relatively remote communities in north Saskatchewan and Northwest Ontario, for “educational” purposes.
The one thing the nuclear establishment has in its favor these days, is a terrible world economy. Some misguided populations may actually sell their souls to the devil.
I think it is rather revealing that searches for nuclear waste repository sites always seem to concentrate on small, often remote communities. During the initial 1985 U.S. repository siting process, I recall a memorable statement by then Vermont’s tough-minded Governor, Madeleine Kunin. In a letter to John Herrington, then US Energy Secretary, she challenged his search for a repository site in Vermont's granite rock. She expressed the main concern of many people when she stated that the US nuclear waste siting program contained criteria which targeted sparsely populated and rural areas.
In no uncertain terms, the Governor told the Energy Secretary ". . . (that) "I firmly believe that if the facility isn't foolproof it must not be built. If it is, it can be located anywhere."
Governor Kunin put her finger on one of the most flagrant contradictions in nuclear waste management programs and certainly one that seems to be operating in Canada now. On the one hand, the public is told by the nuclear establishment that underground "disposal" is safe. But on the other hand, their efforts for research and siting all seem to concentrate on low population areas. As the Governor said, if it really is safe, and foolproof, ". . . it can be located anywhere." Of course she was right. Why not big cities and metropolitan areas
I strongly believe that the day will come when science, not politics and commercial interests, will solve the nuclear waste problem. Science created these radioactive substances, and science will transmute them to inert, harmless, substances. The technology is already on the drawing board.
Walt Robbins
September, 2011
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
trewalt
Comments on the proposal to build nuclear reactors at Darlington February 18, 20
To: Panel Secretariat, Darlington New Nuclear Power Plant Project Joint Review Panel, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
The proponent has given me no reason to believe that the objective of producing 4500 megawatts from new nuclear reactors at Darlington cannot be met over the same, or shorter, time frame and for less cost from the accelerated development of alternative renewable sources of energy and from significant conservation efforts. With the political will, Ontario should be able to produce at least that much electrical energy from green alternatives and conservation rather than from highly polluting sources such as nuclear and coal. Especially, since the construction of a full-scale nuclear power reactor can take as much as a decade or more to complete.
However, let’s do it right. What Ontario needs is a serious, comprehensive and unbiased comparative analysis which includes projections of the full range of benefits and costs of new nuclear construction vs. those from a realistic spectrum of green energy sources and conservation.
Without such a study, any conclusions drawn regarding the efficacy of proceeding with a highly centralized, extremely expensive nuclear option at this point would be meaningless and could do a great disservice to the people of Ontario.
It should be noted that a recently released study (January 27, 2011) by Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi of Stanford University concludes that the world can be electrically powered by alternative energy from wind, water and sunlight within 20 to 40 years. Nuclear energy is ruled out as an option particularly on the basis of potential terrorism threats, weapons proliferation, carbon emissions, and radioactive waste issues.
Significant developments in alternative energy are underway which must not be brushed aside and ignored within the narrow boundaries of a typical environmental assessment process on one particular mode of energy.
It should also be noted that the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Energy Agency-backed Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) project, declared that, for the second year in a row, the quantity of “newly installed capacity” of renewable energy in Europe and the U.S. outpaced that for fossil fuels and nuclear. The report suggests the same outcome is likely on a global basis this year.
The ongoing Darlington environmental assessment must be amended to encompass a comparative analysis which also includes the negative features and consequences of nuclear energy, (many of which are frequently overlooked).
As a reminder, following is a summary of some of those “down-sides:”
.Nuclear energy is responsible for the release of large quantities of greenhouse gasses and other noxious emissions
According to a December 14, 2006 report by the Pembina Institute, no other energy source combines the generation of as wide a range of conventional pollutants and waste streams-including heavy metals, smog-and acid-rain precursors and greenhouse gases. It notes that "...total greenhouse gas emissions associated with uranium mining, milling, refining, conversion and fuel fabrication in Canada are estimated at between 240,000 and 366,000 tonnes of CO2 per year."
.Harmful emissions from the nuclear industry will continue to increase as supplies of rich uranium ore decrease
According to scientists Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Bartlett Smith, "...at the present rate of use, worldwide supplies of rich uranium ore will soon become exhausted, perhaps within the next decade. Nuclear power stations of the future will have to rely on second-grade ore, which requires huge amounts of conventional energy to refine it. For each ton of poor-quality uranium, some 5000 tons of granite that contain it will have to be mined, milled and then disposed of. This could rise to 10,000 tons if the quality deteriorates further. At some point, and it could happen soon, the nuclear industry will be emitting as much carbon dioxide from mining and treating its ore as it saves from the so-called clean power it produces thanks to nuclear fission." The researchers estimate that "The use of nuclear power causes, at the end of the road and under the most favourable conditions, approximately one-third as much carbon dioxide emission as gas-fired electricity production."
.Nuclear power production could well go into energy deficit as rich Uranium ore quantities are consumed
According to energy writer David Fleming in Prospect magazine on the subject of rich ore depletion, "...it (nuclear) would be putting more energy into the process than it could extract from it. Its contribution to meeting the world's energy needs would become negative! The so-called reliability of nuclear power, which its proponents enthuse over, would therefore rest on the growing use of fossil fuels rather than their replacement."
In my view, Fleming’s comments translate into more and larger dangerous uranium tailing ponds with all of their health and safety issues. The Stop Darlington coalition says “there are currently over 200 million tonnes of uranium tailings in Ontario and Saskatchewan. This waste remains a hazard for thousands of years and contains carcinogens, such as radium, radon gas, and thorium among others.”
.Nuclear reactors routinely emit other noxious substances, one of the worst of which is radioactive tritium into the environment
According to Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, "Tritium poses an ever-present radiological hazard to CANDU (reactor) workers. It is also an environmental contaminant which pollutes the drinking water of many communities situated near CANDU reactors. In addition, atmospheric emissions of tritium are readily inhaled - and also absorbed directly through the skin - by residents living near CANDU reactors."
.Nuclear reactors can have an adverse impact on surrounding bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes
According to Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, the lake has a “fragile” ecosystem. Since millions of people depend on this lake for basic physiological needs, it is my view that the plan to place additional large-scale nuclear reactors on the lake could enhance that fragility and is, therefore, a highly questionable undertaking.
.New nuclear reactor design problems can delay or even terminate large scale, expensive projects
One example of this phenomenon in which I was personally involved, can be found in Atomic Energy of Canada’s failed effort to develop a promised 10 mw Slowpoke reactor, even while attempting to market it in Canada and abroad. The 2 mw pilot version at the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Manitoba was finally shut down as it failed to reach its full capacity.
Many concerns have been expressed about the technical problems associated with the so-called “new generation” of large nuclear reactors.
.The Canadian taxpayer is footing much of the bill and incurring much of the national debt, for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd's (AECL's) nuclear expansion. The economics of nuclear energy are not sustainable
According to a 2006 Energy Probe study, federal subsidies to AECL since its inception in 1952 amounted to $74.9 billion of Federal Government debt (about 12 per cent of the entire outstanding amount).
According to Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Greenpeace nuclear analyst. “Ontario consumers spent nearly $2 billion (in 2009) on their electricity bills to pay down the debt from building reactors in the 1970s...” This “debt retirement charge” continues to appear on Hydro One billings.
Significant cost overruns are not confined to CANDU reactor nuclear power development in Ontario. A current case in point is the development and construction of the Olkiluoto reactor in Finland by the French based AREVA company. According to Stephen Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, "Olkiluoto has become an example of all that can go wrong in economic terms with new reactors.” Areva and the utility involved "...are in bitter dispute over who will bear the cost overruns and there is a real risk now that the utility will default"
According to the Stop Darlington coalition “This (Darlington) plan will divert billions of dollars that should be invested in cheaper and cleaner green energy sources. Expanding our use of green energy to replace Darlington would create thousands of decentralized jobs, save rate-payers money and end the production of radioactive waste.”
According to the Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA), energy conservation and efficiency per-kilowatt-hour costs from 2.3 to 4.6 cents, while the re-build of Darlington would be as high as 19 to 37 cents. OCAA also points out that “... every single nuclear project in Ontario’s history has gone over budget and the actual costs of Ontario’s nuclear projects have been 2.5 times greater than the original cost estimates.”
According to John Parsons, director of the energy and environment program at the MIT Sloan School of Management, nuclear is increasingly seen as uncompetitive with natural-gas-fired plants as gas prices fall and global construction costs soar. In 2009, MIT doubled its forecasted construction costs of new nuclear plants, while the U.S. Energy Information Administration increased its 2009 estimate by 37 per cent just this past December.
.No publicly acceptable solution for the permanent disposition of irradiated reactor fuel waste as yet exists in Canada
According to the Canadian federal environmental assessment panel (Seaborn) report released in March, 1998 after an eight year intensive public process "... the (AECL) concept in its current form for deep geologic disposal does not have broad public support, and does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear fuel wastes."
.Canada's nuclear industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO,) in November, 2005, after a three year study, continued to endorse the permanent underground burial of irradiated nuclear fuel wastes
According to Elizabeth May, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and currently leader of the Green Party of Canada, "...the NWMO has taken its mandate and skewed it to allow them to make decisions that are industry-biased, and not based on health, safety and security measures."
.If all of Canada's current nuclear waste is transported to a centralized location for storage or permanent burial, shipments by rail, highway and waterway, would be continuous, and over many years, possibly decades
According to Nuclear Waste Watch, (a network of thirty environmental, social and other groups across Canada) "the potential recipient and transport route communities should all have veto power, and should receive funding from proponents for independent research and community education."
Concerns expressed by many groups opposed to nuclear waste transportation include property value losses along the transportation corridor, the routine radiation exposure during handling and transit, worst case scenario radiation exposure, health and environmental costs, and more potential for accidents and terrorist acts resulting from greater shipment frequency and duration of shipments.
The proposal to build reactors at Darlington will obviously add considerably to the potential for transportation risks
.No safe level of ionizing radiation exists
According to a 2005 report of a US National Academy of Sciences panel (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation-BEIR VII), investigating the dangers of low energy, low-dose ionizing radiation, "..it is unlikely that a threshold exists for the induction of cancers... Further, there are extensive data on radiation-induced transmissible mutations in mice and other organisms. There is therefore no reason to believe that humans would be immune to this sort of harm."
The nuclear industry frequently attempts to minimize the impact of low-dose radiation by a misleading comparison with natural “background” radiation.
In the early 1980's, the Government of Manitoba conducted scientific tests of background radiation found in many water wells in the eastern part of the province. As a result it was necessary to condemn many of these wells due to radiation readings in excess of the so-called “allowable” limits for clean drinking water health and safety.
It is possible that the lack of safe levels of low dose radiation results in an increase in various forms of cancer in areas surrounding nuclear reactors. For instance, in a 2008 study published in the European Journal of Cancer Care, it was reported that leukemia death rates in U.S. children near nuclear reactors rose sharply (vs. the national trend) in the past two decades.
.Terrorists could use nuclear reactors and nuclear waste as weapons of mass destruction and for the development of “dirty bombs.”
We live in increasingly dangerous times.
According to journalist Jeffrey St. Clair, shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., it was widely reported that al-Qaeda had given serious consideration to crashing commercial aircraft into several nuclear plants on that day. In his September 14, 2002 Counterpunch article (The Fire Next Time), he reports that al-Qaeda operatives Ramzi bin al-Shaibah and Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammad told Al-Jazeera interviewer Yosri Fouda, that future attacks on Western nuclear facilities could not be ruled out.
But the real Achille's heel at a nuclear plants is the adjacent spent fuel facility, which contains major concentrations of highly radioactive material. They lack the heavy duty containment safeguard provided for the reactor, and could be considered "sitting ducks" for disastrous terror attacks. Large explosions, along with major fire resulting in radioactive release from spent fuel would have serious health, social and economic consequences for people in the surrounding geographical area. It should be noted that many of our nuclear facilities are in close proximity to the Great Lakes. Any ecological disaster resulting from terrorism could affect water quality in both Canada and the United States.
As long as reactors are operating, much of their irradiated fuel waste must remain at the reactor sites in pools of water and/or dry casks for long periods of time, as they simply are too “hot” to handle–even if “out of sight-out of mind” central permanent storage facility were available.
The Darlington proposal would provide even more security concerns.
.More nuclear reactors can lead directly to greater nuclear weapons proliferation
According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, as a result of the projected so-called "...renaissance of the nuclear power industry, twenty-five countries and consortia will have access over a period of two decades to Generation IV reactors fueled by plutonium." In her book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, Dr. Caldicott reminds us that "Canada supplied India with a CIRUS heavy water reactor for making nuclear energy. . . It was this reactor that gave India the plutonium it used in its first 1974 nuclear weapons test."
One negative consequence often leads to another. A decade ago, few would have expected North Korea to have developed atomic weapons. What will a nuclear armed world look like a decade from now. Nuclear power is the ultimate conceiver of nuclear weapons.
The above outline covers some of the problems associated with the development and use of nuclear energy to produce electricity. This outline of nuclear energy down-sides is by no means complete. For example the woefully low insurance amounts for nuclear liability would not begin to cover the damages from large scale nuclear accidents; the contemplated use of irradiated fuel reprocessing in North America and the associated pollution issues that we have been witnessing in France and the U.K.
I am confident that green renewable energy and conservation can meet Ontario’s electrical energy requirements. However, I urge that a comparative analysis be undertaken which includes projections of the full range of benefits and costs of new nuclear construction and operation vs. those from a realistic spectrum of green energy sources and conservation, including possible hydro electricity import from neighboring provinces. In the meanwhile, all work on the Darlington projects should be stopped.
Many thanks for the opportunity to comment on this proposal.
Walter Robbins
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
The proponent has given me no reason to believe that the objective of producing 4500 megawatts from new nuclear reactors at Darlington cannot be met over the same, or shorter, time frame and for less cost from the accelerated development of alternative renewable sources of energy and from significant conservation efforts. With the political will, Ontario should be able to produce at least that much electrical energy from green alternatives and conservation rather than from highly polluting sources such as nuclear and coal. Especially, since the construction of a full-scale nuclear power reactor can take as much as a decade or more to complete.
However, let’s do it right. What Ontario needs is a serious, comprehensive and unbiased comparative analysis which includes projections of the full range of benefits and costs of new nuclear construction vs. those from a realistic spectrum of green energy sources and conservation.
Without such a study, any conclusions drawn regarding the efficacy of proceeding with a highly centralized, extremely expensive nuclear option at this point would be meaningless and could do a great disservice to the people of Ontario.
It should be noted that a recently released study (January 27, 2011) by Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi of Stanford University concludes that the world can be electrically powered by alternative energy from wind, water and sunlight within 20 to 40 years. Nuclear energy is ruled out as an option particularly on the basis of potential terrorism threats, weapons proliferation, carbon emissions, and radioactive waste issues.
Significant developments in alternative energy are underway which must not be brushed aside and ignored within the narrow boundaries of a typical environmental assessment process on one particular mode of energy.
It should also be noted that the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Energy Agency-backed Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) project, declared that, for the second year in a row, the quantity of “newly installed capacity” of renewable energy in Europe and the U.S. outpaced that for fossil fuels and nuclear. The report suggests the same outcome is likely on a global basis this year.
The ongoing Darlington environmental assessment must be amended to encompass a comparative analysis which also includes the negative features and consequences of nuclear energy, (many of which are frequently overlooked).
As a reminder, following is a summary of some of those “down-sides:”
.Nuclear energy is responsible for the release of large quantities of greenhouse gasses and other noxious emissions
According to a December 14, 2006 report by the Pembina Institute, no other energy source combines the generation of as wide a range of conventional pollutants and waste streams-including heavy metals, smog-and acid-rain precursors and greenhouse gases. It notes that "...total greenhouse gas emissions associated with uranium mining, milling, refining, conversion and fuel fabrication in Canada are estimated at between 240,000 and 366,000 tonnes of CO2 per year."
.Harmful emissions from the nuclear industry will continue to increase as supplies of rich uranium ore decrease
According to scientists Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Bartlett Smith, "...at the present rate of use, worldwide supplies of rich uranium ore will soon become exhausted, perhaps within the next decade. Nuclear power stations of the future will have to rely on second-grade ore, which requires huge amounts of conventional energy to refine it. For each ton of poor-quality uranium, some 5000 tons of granite that contain it will have to be mined, milled and then disposed of. This could rise to 10,000 tons if the quality deteriorates further. At some point, and it could happen soon, the nuclear industry will be emitting as much carbon dioxide from mining and treating its ore as it saves from the so-called clean power it produces thanks to nuclear fission." The researchers estimate that "The use of nuclear power causes, at the end of the road and under the most favourable conditions, approximately one-third as much carbon dioxide emission as gas-fired electricity production."
.Nuclear power production could well go into energy deficit as rich Uranium ore quantities are consumed
According to energy writer David Fleming in Prospect magazine on the subject of rich ore depletion, "...it (nuclear) would be putting more energy into the process than it could extract from it. Its contribution to meeting the world's energy needs would become negative! The so-called reliability of nuclear power, which its proponents enthuse over, would therefore rest on the growing use of fossil fuels rather than their replacement."
In my view, Fleming’s comments translate into more and larger dangerous uranium tailing ponds with all of their health and safety issues. The Stop Darlington coalition says “there are currently over 200 million tonnes of uranium tailings in Ontario and Saskatchewan. This waste remains a hazard for thousands of years and contains carcinogens, such as radium, radon gas, and thorium among others.”
.Nuclear reactors routinely emit other noxious substances, one of the worst of which is radioactive tritium into the environment
According to Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, "Tritium poses an ever-present radiological hazard to CANDU (reactor) workers. It is also an environmental contaminant which pollutes the drinking water of many communities situated near CANDU reactors. In addition, atmospheric emissions of tritium are readily inhaled - and also absorbed directly through the skin - by residents living near CANDU reactors."
.Nuclear reactors can have an adverse impact on surrounding bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes
According to Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, the lake has a “fragile” ecosystem. Since millions of people depend on this lake for basic physiological needs, it is my view that the plan to place additional large-scale nuclear reactors on the lake could enhance that fragility and is, therefore, a highly questionable undertaking.
.New nuclear reactor design problems can delay or even terminate large scale, expensive projects
One example of this phenomenon in which I was personally involved, can be found in Atomic Energy of Canada’s failed effort to develop a promised 10 mw Slowpoke reactor, even while attempting to market it in Canada and abroad. The 2 mw pilot version at the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Manitoba was finally shut down as it failed to reach its full capacity.
Many concerns have been expressed about the technical problems associated with the so-called “new generation” of large nuclear reactors.
.The Canadian taxpayer is footing much of the bill and incurring much of the national debt, for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd's (AECL's) nuclear expansion. The economics of nuclear energy are not sustainable
According to a 2006 Energy Probe study, federal subsidies to AECL since its inception in 1952 amounted to $74.9 billion of Federal Government debt (about 12 per cent of the entire outstanding amount).
According to Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Greenpeace nuclear analyst. “Ontario consumers spent nearly $2 billion (in 2009) on their electricity bills to pay down the debt from building reactors in the 1970s...” This “debt retirement charge” continues to appear on Hydro One billings.
Significant cost overruns are not confined to CANDU reactor nuclear power development in Ontario. A current case in point is the development and construction of the Olkiluoto reactor in Finland by the French based AREVA company. According to Stephen Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, "Olkiluoto has become an example of all that can go wrong in economic terms with new reactors.” Areva and the utility involved "...are in bitter dispute over who will bear the cost overruns and there is a real risk now that the utility will default"
According to the Stop Darlington coalition “This (Darlington) plan will divert billions of dollars that should be invested in cheaper and cleaner green energy sources. Expanding our use of green energy to replace Darlington would create thousands of decentralized jobs, save rate-payers money and end the production of radioactive waste.”
According to the Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA), energy conservation and efficiency per-kilowatt-hour costs from 2.3 to 4.6 cents, while the re-build of Darlington would be as high as 19 to 37 cents. OCAA also points out that “... every single nuclear project in Ontario’s history has gone over budget and the actual costs of Ontario’s nuclear projects have been 2.5 times greater than the original cost estimates.”
According to John Parsons, director of the energy and environment program at the MIT Sloan School of Management, nuclear is increasingly seen as uncompetitive with natural-gas-fired plants as gas prices fall and global construction costs soar. In 2009, MIT doubled its forecasted construction costs of new nuclear plants, while the U.S. Energy Information Administration increased its 2009 estimate by 37 per cent just this past December.
.No publicly acceptable solution for the permanent disposition of irradiated reactor fuel waste as yet exists in Canada
According to the Canadian federal environmental assessment panel (Seaborn) report released in March, 1998 after an eight year intensive public process "... the (AECL) concept in its current form for deep geologic disposal does not have broad public support, and does not have the required level of acceptability to be adopted as Canada's approach for managing nuclear fuel wastes."
.Canada's nuclear industry-based Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO,) in November, 2005, after a three year study, continued to endorse the permanent underground burial of irradiated nuclear fuel wastes
According to Elizabeth May, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and currently leader of the Green Party of Canada, "...the NWMO has taken its mandate and skewed it to allow them to make decisions that are industry-biased, and not based on health, safety and security measures."
.If all of Canada's current nuclear waste is transported to a centralized location for storage or permanent burial, shipments by rail, highway and waterway, would be continuous, and over many years, possibly decades
According to Nuclear Waste Watch, (a network of thirty environmental, social and other groups across Canada) "the potential recipient and transport route communities should all have veto power, and should receive funding from proponents for independent research and community education."
Concerns expressed by many groups opposed to nuclear waste transportation include property value losses along the transportation corridor, the routine radiation exposure during handling and transit, worst case scenario radiation exposure, health and environmental costs, and more potential for accidents and terrorist acts resulting from greater shipment frequency and duration of shipments.
The proposal to build reactors at Darlington will obviously add considerably to the potential for transportation risks
.No safe level of ionizing radiation exists
According to a 2005 report of a US National Academy of Sciences panel (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation-BEIR VII), investigating the dangers of low energy, low-dose ionizing radiation, "..it is unlikely that a threshold exists for the induction of cancers... Further, there are extensive data on radiation-induced transmissible mutations in mice and other organisms. There is therefore no reason to believe that humans would be immune to this sort of harm."
The nuclear industry frequently attempts to minimize the impact of low-dose radiation by a misleading comparison with natural “background” radiation.
In the early 1980's, the Government of Manitoba conducted scientific tests of background radiation found in many water wells in the eastern part of the province. As a result it was necessary to condemn many of these wells due to radiation readings in excess of the so-called “allowable” limits for clean drinking water health and safety.
It is possible that the lack of safe levels of low dose radiation results in an increase in various forms of cancer in areas surrounding nuclear reactors. For instance, in a 2008 study published in the European Journal of Cancer Care, it was reported that leukemia death rates in U.S. children near nuclear reactors rose sharply (vs. the national trend) in the past two decades.
.Terrorists could use nuclear reactors and nuclear waste as weapons of mass destruction and for the development of “dirty bombs.”
We live in increasingly dangerous times.
According to journalist Jeffrey St. Clair, shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., it was widely reported that al-Qaeda had given serious consideration to crashing commercial aircraft into several nuclear plants on that day. In his September 14, 2002 Counterpunch article (The Fire Next Time), he reports that al-Qaeda operatives Ramzi bin al-Shaibah and Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammad told Al-Jazeera interviewer Yosri Fouda, that future attacks on Western nuclear facilities could not be ruled out.
But the real Achille's heel at a nuclear plants is the adjacent spent fuel facility, which contains major concentrations of highly radioactive material. They lack the heavy duty containment safeguard provided for the reactor, and could be considered "sitting ducks" for disastrous terror attacks. Large explosions, along with major fire resulting in radioactive release from spent fuel would have serious health, social and economic consequences for people in the surrounding geographical area. It should be noted that many of our nuclear facilities are in close proximity to the Great Lakes. Any ecological disaster resulting from terrorism could affect water quality in both Canada and the United States.
As long as reactors are operating, much of their irradiated fuel waste must remain at the reactor sites in pools of water and/or dry casks for long periods of time, as they simply are too “hot” to handle–even if “out of sight-out of mind” central permanent storage facility were available.
The Darlington proposal would provide even more security concerns.
.More nuclear reactors can lead directly to greater nuclear weapons proliferation
According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, as a result of the projected so-called "...renaissance of the nuclear power industry, twenty-five countries and consortia will have access over a period of two decades to Generation IV reactors fueled by plutonium." In her book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, Dr. Caldicott reminds us that "Canada supplied India with a CIRUS heavy water reactor for making nuclear energy. . . It was this reactor that gave India the plutonium it used in its first 1974 nuclear weapons test."
One negative consequence often leads to another. A decade ago, few would have expected North Korea to have developed atomic weapons. What will a nuclear armed world look like a decade from now. Nuclear power is the ultimate conceiver of nuclear weapons.
The above outline covers some of the problems associated with the development and use of nuclear energy to produce electricity. This outline of nuclear energy down-sides is by no means complete. For example the woefully low insurance amounts for nuclear liability would not begin to cover the damages from large scale nuclear accidents; the contemplated use of irradiated fuel reprocessing in North America and the associated pollution issues that we have been witnessing in France and the U.K.
I am confident that green renewable energy and conservation can meet Ontario’s electrical energy requirements. However, I urge that a comparative analysis be undertaken which includes projections of the full range of benefits and costs of new nuclear construction and operation vs. those from a realistic spectrum of green energy sources and conservation, including possible hydro electricity import from neighboring provinces. In the meanwhile, all work on the Darlington projects should be stopped.
Many thanks for the opportunity to comment on this proposal.
Walter Robbins
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
No replies - reply
Siting an Underground Nuclear Waste Garbage Dump Back to the Future, II
In my first “Back to the Future” article, I pointed out that the so-called "Option 4 'Adaptive Phased Management' (APM)" program described in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s (NWMO’s) final report is little more than a dressed-up version of Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd’s (AECL’s) failed 1980's nuclear waste burial program.
In fact, both plans would ultimately yield the same end result: a sealed underground nuclear waste dump, some of its contents radioactive and lethal for eons of time.
Now, NWMO is going back to the future in its approach to selecting a site for a repository. Aside from using a lot of smooth talk, it is dangling big bucks as an enticement to municipalities and other groups.
A recent example is NWMO’s approach to aboriginal communities, something that was tried south of the border by the U.S. Department of Energy during the 1990's and failed miserably. In the end, all the first nations in the U.S. which were contacted, rejected the offer to host a surface monitored retrievable nuclear waste storage facility, turning down offers of millions of dollars for the “privilege.”
In November 2010, various Canadian media outlets revealed that the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) has received one million dollars from the NWMO to educate first nations people about nuclear waste and that two northern communities—the English River First Nation and the Métis village of Pinehouse—have come up as potential sites. And of course it is no secret that vastly larger sums of money would be made available to the “finalist” of the site selection process.
I was struck by the reported comments of Lyle Whitefish, FSIN vice-chief (in a November 18th 2010 article in the Saskatchewan News Network). While declaring neutrality on the issue, Whitefish said that “he and FSIN will not be providing any other information besides that coming from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.” He was quoted as saying that “...there may be an opportunity in the future for other organizations to be heard on the nuclear waste issue.”
In a CBC News item online, November 18, 2010, Cathy Holtslander, of the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan, was reported as being concerned that the NWMO information would be biased. She said that "It needs to have independent information, not information from a group that has an interest in basically looking after their problem."
As a former member of the nuclear establishment, and having been involved with and written extensively on this issue for many years, I certainly believe that Ms. Hotslander raises an important point about sources of information. Perhaps the NWMO did not mention to Mr. Whitefish that throughout the world, nuclear waste management is one of the most controversial public policy issues of our time encompassing many different points of view. I can only hope that FSIN will agree to having other information and voices heard up front and right along side those of NWMO, an organization that is clearly an agent of the Canadian nuclear establishment.
NWMO has also been providing information to two interested communities in northwest Ontario; Ear Falls’ and Ignace . The information has been publicly challenged by North Bay’s Northwatch organization, on grounds of “omissions and understatements.” Northwatch’s Brennain Lloyd cited NWMO informational deficiencies, including issues around long term repository reliability, storage container reliability, and the rejection of the earlier AECL burial concept after a ten year environmental assessment review. Ms. Lloyd also observed that “...no country has yet permanently disposed of nuclear fuel waste in rock...”
I commented on NWMO’s siting process in December, 2008, when it was in draft form and concluded that “Aside from the fact that a plan to permanently bury nuclear fuel waste is inherently immoral, unethical, unscientific, and downright mean-spirited to future generations, it is simply not a good idea.” Furthermore, I have a real problem with the dangling of large sums of money to entice communities into such a scheme.
In the final analysis, any community which supposedly “benefits” from this dubious activity, could very well be playing dice with the health and safety of its own descendants.
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
In fact, both plans would ultimately yield the same end result: a sealed underground nuclear waste dump, some of its contents radioactive and lethal for eons of time.
Now, NWMO is going back to the future in its approach to selecting a site for a repository. Aside from using a lot of smooth talk, it is dangling big bucks as an enticement to municipalities and other groups.
A recent example is NWMO’s approach to aboriginal communities, something that was tried south of the border by the U.S. Department of Energy during the 1990's and failed miserably. In the end, all the first nations in the U.S. which were contacted, rejected the offer to host a surface monitored retrievable nuclear waste storage facility, turning down offers of millions of dollars for the “privilege.”
In November 2010, various Canadian media outlets revealed that the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) has received one million dollars from the NWMO to educate first nations people about nuclear waste and that two northern communities—the English River First Nation and the Métis village of Pinehouse—have come up as potential sites. And of course it is no secret that vastly larger sums of money would be made available to the “finalist” of the site selection process.
I was struck by the reported comments of Lyle Whitefish, FSIN vice-chief (in a November 18th 2010 article in the Saskatchewan News Network). While declaring neutrality on the issue, Whitefish said that “he and FSIN will not be providing any other information besides that coming from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.” He was quoted as saying that “...there may be an opportunity in the future for other organizations to be heard on the nuclear waste issue.”
In a CBC News item online, November 18, 2010, Cathy Holtslander, of the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan, was reported as being concerned that the NWMO information would be biased. She said that "It needs to have independent information, not information from a group that has an interest in basically looking after their problem."
As a former member of the nuclear establishment, and having been involved with and written extensively on this issue for many years, I certainly believe that Ms. Hotslander raises an important point about sources of information. Perhaps the NWMO did not mention to Mr. Whitefish that throughout the world, nuclear waste management is one of the most controversial public policy issues of our time encompassing many different points of view. I can only hope that FSIN will agree to having other information and voices heard up front and right along side those of NWMO, an organization that is clearly an agent of the Canadian nuclear establishment.
NWMO has also been providing information to two interested communities in northwest Ontario; Ear Falls’ and Ignace . The information has been publicly challenged by North Bay’s Northwatch organization, on grounds of “omissions and understatements.” Northwatch’s Brennain Lloyd cited NWMO informational deficiencies, including issues around long term repository reliability, storage container reliability, and the rejection of the earlier AECL burial concept after a ten year environmental assessment review. Ms. Lloyd also observed that “...no country has yet permanently disposed of nuclear fuel waste in rock...”
I commented on NWMO’s siting process in December, 2008, when it was in draft form and concluded that “Aside from the fact that a plan to permanently bury nuclear fuel waste is inherently immoral, unethical, unscientific, and downright mean-spirited to future generations, it is simply not a good idea.” Furthermore, I have a real problem with the dangling of large sums of money to entice communities into such a scheme.
In the final analysis, any community which supposedly “benefits” from this dubious activity, could very well be playing dice with the health and safety of its own descendants.
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
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Getting Rid of the Shaft? Maybe!
First, they tried to hide it’s location in the dense bush. Initially, they erected no signs. Then they said it was just in the planning stages, even as the bulldozers were at work moving the earth. Later, they said they were only doing nuclear waste research, even as they told the local municipal council that they would entertain a request for the siting of a full scale underground nuclear waste repository. The municipal council did not follow through as opposition continued to grow.
The underground research repository developed in the 1980's, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, in the Rural Municipality of Lac du Bonnet, by Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd., (AECL) was officially decommissioned on November 17, 2010. Or so it seems!
“Getting the Shaft, The Radioactive Waste Controversy in Manitoba,” was released by Queenston House Publishing Company in 1984. It is my personal account of this incredible episode of nuclear madness, from early in 1980, to the present. As a property owner in the municipality, my role was that of a public relations and media spokesperson for the citizens group. My book, plus several sequels and related articles, are freely available on my web site; http://www.nukeshaft.ca
To a large extent, the waste project was propelled by the results of test bore hole drilling at the nearby Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, at Pinawa, Manitoba. The pre-Cambrian granite rock of the Canadian Shield was deemed by the geological experts to be the ideal “host” environment for a deep nuclear waste repository. The special “plutonic” formations were considered to be “solid rock,” with few cracks or fissures.
The discovery of two major water bearing fracture zones during the excavations did not seem to faze the geologists in the least, even as pumps ran continuously to keep the water out of the massive hole in the rock. On my one visit to the underground facility, the place was soaking wet.
I spoke with George Ylonen about the decommissioned facility. As a resident of the municipality, a retired hard rock miner, and an initiator of the local concerned citizens group, he was delighted at this turn of events. “I’m so happy I lived to see this day,” he told me. However, he went on to express some concern that the current generation of Canadian nuclear people might come back for a second try if they fail to find the “willing” host they are currently seeking elsewhere in Canada.
Apparently, the deep hole was only capped, not filled in and sealed with rock as we had been given to believe it would be, back in the 1980's. Furthermore, according to an article in the Winnipeg Free Press on December 8, 2010, Paul Thompson, geotechnical science and engineering branch manager with AECL said that despite its closure, research at the site will continue and that they will be watching how well a huge man-made "seal" installed in the interior of the shaft works to keep two water aquifers forever separate. According to the article “The seal is built of highly compacted clay sandwiched between two massive concrete plugs.”
Thompson was quoted as saying "Basically, it's resembling what we would imagine a seal would be at a (nuclear waste) repository if we were ever to build a repository," Thompson said.
I share George’s pleasure in seeing that underground facility officially decommissioned, and I sincerely hope that the reckless idea of permanent underground emplacement of highly toxic and radioactive spent nuclear fuel never sees the light of day in Canada.
Walt Robbins
January, 2011
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
The underground research repository developed in the 1980's, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, in the Rural Municipality of Lac du Bonnet, by Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd., (AECL) was officially decommissioned on November 17, 2010. Or so it seems!
“Getting the Shaft, The Radioactive Waste Controversy in Manitoba,” was released by Queenston House Publishing Company in 1984. It is my personal account of this incredible episode of nuclear madness, from early in 1980, to the present. As a property owner in the municipality, my role was that of a public relations and media spokesperson for the citizens group. My book, plus several sequels and related articles, are freely available on my web site; http://www.nukeshaft.ca
To a large extent, the waste project was propelled by the results of test bore hole drilling at the nearby Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, at Pinawa, Manitoba. The pre-Cambrian granite rock of the Canadian Shield was deemed by the geological experts to be the ideal “host” environment for a deep nuclear waste repository. The special “plutonic” formations were considered to be “solid rock,” with few cracks or fissures.
The discovery of two major water bearing fracture zones during the excavations did not seem to faze the geologists in the least, even as pumps ran continuously to keep the water out of the massive hole in the rock. On my one visit to the underground facility, the place was soaking wet.
I spoke with George Ylonen about the decommissioned facility. As a resident of the municipality, a retired hard rock miner, and an initiator of the local concerned citizens group, he was delighted at this turn of events. “I’m so happy I lived to see this day,” he told me. However, he went on to express some concern that the current generation of Canadian nuclear people might come back for a second try if they fail to find the “willing” host they are currently seeking elsewhere in Canada.
Apparently, the deep hole was only capped, not filled in and sealed with rock as we had been given to believe it would be, back in the 1980's. Furthermore, according to an article in the Winnipeg Free Press on December 8, 2010, Paul Thompson, geotechnical science and engineering branch manager with AECL said that despite its closure, research at the site will continue and that they will be watching how well a huge man-made "seal" installed in the interior of the shaft works to keep two water aquifers forever separate. According to the article “The seal is built of highly compacted clay sandwiched between two massive concrete plugs.”
Thompson was quoted as saying "Basically, it's resembling what we would imagine a seal would be at a (nuclear waste) repository if we were ever to build a repository," Thompson said.
I share George’s pleasure in seeing that underground facility officially decommissioned, and I sincerely hope that the reckless idea of permanent underground emplacement of highly toxic and radioactive spent nuclear fuel never sees the light of day in Canada.
Walt Robbins
January, 2011
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
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The beginning of the end of nuclear power
The world’s powerful nuclear establishment took a big public relations hit in July, 2010.
The UN Environment Program (UNEP) and the International Energy Agency-backed Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) project, declared that, for the second year in a row, the quantity of “newly installed capacity” of renewable energy in Europe and the U.S. outpaced that for fossil fuels and nuclear. The report suggests the same outcome is likely on a global basis by next year.
As reported in the July 15, 2010 Report on Business section of the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, the report stated that green energy has “reached a clear tipping point” as the main kind of new electricity supply.
Green energy includes such sources as wind power, solar energy, biomass, geothermal, hydro power, ocean wave and tidal power. Also, energy conservation technology could be considered a major form of green energy.
Of course, it will be many years before the tipping point becomes an overwhelming reality. But the trend is quite clear. A comprehensive system of green energy and conservation alternatives is rapidly developing around the world.
Some countries continue to plan for more nuclear energy projects, e.g., China and Russia and even the U.S. But it can take a decade or more to build nuclear plants, whereas many green energy and conservation projects can be completed in a much shorter period of that time. Also, it is likely that countries now planning more nuclear energy will be unable to proceed with many of their projects for financial, design and safety reasons.
There are many downsides to nuclear power generation. To mention a few, it requires fabrication processes which cause noxious emissions and greenhouse gasses, uses non-renewable and ever more costly uranium deposits with increasing amounts of energy inputs, emits radioactive tritium into the air and water, requires massive public loans and subsidies, contributing greatly to the national debt, is the basis for nuclear weapons proliferation, and a desirable target for terrorism. It is a technology that must have an impossible-to-achieve perfect record of zero tolerance for accidents over an entire reactor life cycle, as there is no safe level of ionizing radiation.
Furthermore, some observers point out that , in the unlikely event that all planned nuclear reactors are finally built, they would contribute little or nothing to global energy supply or to the mitigation of any possible adverse effects of climate change, since they will largely be replacing old decommissioned reactors.
And then, of course, there is the intractable nuclear waste issue. A few countries are still planning to develop permanent underground repositories, such as Canada and Sweden, and likely China. But there is a growing reluctance in other quarters to pursue the permanent underground nuclear waste burial option.
Aside from the fact that the underground burial option is certainly no solution to the waste problem and should not be pursued, the act of challenging and thus slowing the development of nuclear waste repositories has helped to “buy time,” for the expansion of green energy and conservation technology.
Renewable green energy may only be providing a small percentage of the world’s energy now, but the tipping point is great news for all of us who have worked so long to bring about a “paradigm shift” away from nuclear energy and fossil fuel toward a sustainable alternative clean energy future and a much safer and healthier planet.
Walt Robbins
August, 2010
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
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The Unholy Connection:
Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Waste Reprocessing and Nuclear Weapons
U.S. President Barack Obama’s vision of a nuclear weapons free world is indeed laudable as is his treaty with Russia on weapons stockpile reduction and the communique issued at his April, 2010, 47-nation summit promising greater efforts to block "non-state actors" from obtaining nuclear materials for "malicious purposes."
However, someone should tell him about the elephant in the room; that his encouragement and financial assistance for the development of more nuclear energy in his own country runs directly counter to his weapons-free world vision. (Some of the many negative aspects of nuclear energy have been outlined in my "downsides" article.
You cannot build nuclear weapons without first having nuclear energy, which produces the needed ingredients for atomic bombs. The world is already witnessing the frightening linkage between nuclear energy and nuclear armaments in North Korea and Iran. The linkage is clear as is the desire of additional countries to pursue nuclear energy development.
Referring to North Korea and Iran, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that "Both are countries whose actions contravene their international obligations. Both use violence and intimidation to deprive their own citizens of fundamental rights. Both are serious threats to global security. There is much at stake. If nuclear proliferation leads to the use of nuclear weapons, whether by states or non-state actors, then no matter where the bombs are set off, the catastrophe will be felt around the world." Absolutely! But, Mr. Harper should also be advocating the phase out of nuclear energy, without which nuclear weapons development would not be possible.
Further proliferation of nuclear energy can bring the world even closer to the risk of nuclear bomb making materials falling into the wrong hands. Nuclear energy expansion is likely to increase the already dangerous potential for diversion of nuclear materials to unsavory terrorist groups around the world. The more nuclear facilities–the more opportunities for nuclear terrorism.
And then, there is the unsolved problem of the irradiated fuel waste, which can be diverted to nuclear weapons development. Producing more nuclear fuel waste without a truly acceptable solution for its disposition is really quite unconscionable.
President Obama’s new “Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.” is now in the process of determining what to do about irradiated nuclear fuel wastes, now that Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has essentially been eliminated as a potential underground repository site.
One option, the reprocessing of nuclear waste, will quite likely be a topic for discussion by the Blue Ribbon Commission.
It is truly amazing how many nuclear energy advocates naively believe that all you need do with nuclear waste is “recycle it.” to pave the way for a nuclear power “renaissance.” This simplistic notion completely overlooks the harsh realities surrounding nuclear waste reprocessing.
Nuclear waste is anything but a nice, clean, green substance that can be recycled like yesterday morning’s newspaper. Lethality and toxicity of this waste as well as its mind-boggling longevity is well known. You cannot simply take the waste and easily convert it into fresh reactor fuel. You cannot cool it off and stick it back into the reactor.
Reprocessing requires that you break up the deadly radioactive waste and extract the elements you need, putting them through an unbelievably toxic “un-green” process to produce some usable fuel for the reactor.
The process is well described by Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, CCNR. On his web site he says that “...separating plutonium from spent fuel is a dangerous and a dirty business. First the fuel is chopped up, by remote control, behind heavy lead shielding. These chopped-up pieces are then dissolved in boiling nitric acid, releasing radioactive gases in the process. The plutonium is separated from the acid solution by chemical means, leaving large quantities of high-level radioactive liquid waste and sludge behind. After it has cooled down for several years, this liquid waste will have to be solidified for ultimate disposal, while the separated plutonium is fabricated into nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons.”
As noted by Wikipedia, “reprocessing of civilian fuel has long been employed in Europe, at the COGEMA La Hague site in France, the Sellafield site in the United Kingdom, the Mayak Chemical Combine in Russia, and at sites such as the Tokai plant in Japan, the Tarapur plant in India, and briefly at the West Valley Reprocessing Plant in the United States.”
Yes, some of those countries currently reprocess irradiated nuclear fuel rods. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that the down sides of reprocessing far outweigh any of its perceived advantages.
As Max S. Power (an analyst who worked on nuclear cleanup issues for two decades ), points out, “...in the 1980s, (U.S.) Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment concluded ‘reprocessing’ which generates additional radioactive waste streams and involves operational risks of its own, does not offer advantages that are sufficient to justify its use for waste management reasons alone.’”
According to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, “Reprocessing is the fundamental link between a nuclear reactor and a plutonium bomb.” The Union of Concerned Scientists has noted that “reprocessing would increase the ease of nuclear proliferation.”
Reprocessing is also responsible for considerable radioactive land and water pollution; for example from the British and French reprocessing operations at Sellafield and La Hague respectively. Originating from Sellafield sources, the Irish sea merits the dubious distinction of being called the most radioactive body of water in the world. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability says that “France's reprocessing plant at La Hague routinely discharges into the English Channel so-called low-level liquid radioactive waste which has contaminated seas as far away as the Arctic Circle.”
Given these proliferation and environmental concerns, I hope that the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission eliminates nuclear waste reprocessing from any serious consideration.
Most importantly, the Commission should recommend that further production of nuclear waste itself be curtailed by the phase-out of nuclear energy, in favor of the many available truly innovative renewable green energy and conservation measures.
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
Click on "Nuke Droppings" for the Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
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STRAWS IN THE WIND
Tags: 
nuclear waste
nuclear wasteCanada’s nuclear establishment continues to pursue its goal to achieve the permanent underground burial of irradiated nuclear fuel waste. The industry dominated Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) in its draft work plan for the period 2010 - 2014, expects to find a “willing community” to volunteer to host the first underground nuclear waste dump in Canada.
However, elsewhere, there are now some early signs that the permanent burial option may be losing some of its lustre.
For example, in the U.S., former Senator. Pete Domenici, a longtime advocate of nuclear power, recently stated “...that it is time to give up attempts to create a permanent disposal site for the nation's nuclear fuel waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.” “Yucca Mountain is political. Everybody knows that." he said in an interview after his speech, "The truth of the matter is, the world has passed by the idea of putting spent fuel rods as hot as they come out of the reactor underground in perpetuity."
In Scotland, Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said: “The consultation supports our commitment to near-surface, near-site facilities, allowing waste to be monitorable and retrievable with minimal need for transportation over long distances.
“Having an out-of-sight, out-of-mind policy is losing support.”
Hopefully, Canada, and other countries still pursuing the permanent burial option will be flexible enough to reconsider their approaches and their options.
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
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The Little Reactor That Couldn’t
Back in the late 1950's, ideas for the use of small nuclear reactors for various purposes were in vogue. During that period, when I worked for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, I heard speculation over the possible use of atomic energy to run our autos, heat our houses, lift our rockets to the heavens. Many of these ideas were so wild, they were quickly dropped. However, some small reactors were designed and used for university research projects, medical and industrial isotope production and even nuclear submarine propulsion.
Small nuclear reactors can range in power output from less that one up to several hundred megawatts.
More recently, prospects for a so-called nuclear renaissance have revitalized speculation about the design and use of small reactors in Canada. For example, in an interview with CBC News, in February, 2009, Premier Brad Wall said “... he hoped Saskatchewan could play a role developing small reactor technology. He went on to say the provincial government might be able to devote some resources to research and development in that area.”
A report by Saskatchewan’s Uranium Development Partnership, (UDP) included an upbeat statement that “because they require little or no refueling and produce both heat and electricity, small reactors could eventually compete with small-scale diesel, oil and gas generation as a power alternative in remote sites.” The report went on to state that, “Saskatchewan has the opportunity to participate in this market by partnering with a commercial technology developer on a demonstration project.”
Ah, but–the history of small reactors in Canada includes some very expensive “lemons,” something that should give pause to anyone seriously contemplating getting into that kind of business.
As an example, one of those not so successful small reactor efforts was the SLOWPOKE 3, a brainchild of Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (AECL).
The Slowpoke became an issue for me in 1986, when I was a spokesperson for the Concerned Citizens’ of Manitoba (CCM.), Canada, a nuclear waste watchdog group. After years of our lobbying, the Manitoba provincial government was poised to pass a bill which would prohibit the burial or long-term storage of high level nuclear waste in the Province.
AECL officials were quite upset over the upcoming legislation, one of their concerns being that the bill contained a clause which prohibited the storage of high-level nuclear waste originating from outside the Province for more than seven days. This, according to the AECL testimony, would result in its inability to store the waste from its new "Safe Low Power Kritical (sic) Experiment," (a.k.a. SLOWPOKE) at its Whiteshell, Manitoba based nuclear research station.
The SLOWPOKE 3 was to be a small (10 Megawatt) heat and isotope producing nuclear reactor that AECL was actively marketing around the world, even though it was still in the early stages of untested design. AECL maintained that the pending legislation would force it to set up waste storage facilities elsewhere at additional cost, and that Manitoba would lose "commercial benefits" from the SLOWPOKE 3 program.
It appeared that AECL planned to retrieve the waste from all the SLOWPOKE 3 reactors that it expected to sell in Canada, and abroad, and bring it to Manitoba for storage! Nevertheless, the Manitoba legislation was enacted into law.
However, that did not stop AECL from promoting its mini-nuke.
I recalled reading an article in the Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba, Leader of June 15, 1982, headlined "Nuclear Furnaces Could Soon Be Heating Your House." It went on to describe the small, unattended, SLOWPOKE reactor which could heat a building and require refueling only once every five years.
"Safe Low Power Kritical Experiment!" It was fascinating that AECL chose to use the word "Safe," to describe its new "baby" reactor. It left me with more apprehensions than I already had about its large power reactors, with the acronym, "CANDU," which lacked that vital word “Safe.” Would they now change CANDU to "SCANDU"?
Also, I wondered why the use of the word "experiment." After all, who wants to buy a radioactive "experiment" to heat their community centre or other buildings?
A demonstration 2-megawatt version of the SLOWPOKE 3 reactor began very low-power operation at AECL's Pinawa, Manitoba, Whiteshell research station on July 15, 1987. But well before that small demonstration model was up and running, the Crown Corporation was already actively marketing the non-existent 10 mw version in such places as China, Korea, Europe and Canada's own Northwest Territory.
By January, 1988, AECL had signed a memorandum of agreement with Hungary for a potential SLOWPOKE 3 sale.
A May 29, 1986, Winnipeg Free Press article headlined "Radioactive Waste Repository for Manitoba Planned by Agency," really caught our attention. AECL’s idea was to remove spent fuel from each SLOWPOKE 3 reactor every five to eight years. The thirty or forty fuel bundles would be placed in concrete cylinders at its research facilities at Pinawa, Manitoba and Chalk River, Ontario. Eventually, it was reported, the waste would go into the (still non-existent) permanent underground waste repository. CCM took the position that the Province should not permit storage of SLOWPOKE 3 waste and that (it should) ". . . block the buildup of anything which tends to take us closer to a nuclear waste repository in Manitoba."
CCM considered that if AECL started bringing its foreign customers' SLOWPOKE 3 excrement back to Canada, it would be well on the road to the full-scale commercial international radioactive waste dump about which CCM had been warning the public for so many years.
According to the article, Provincial Environment Minister Gerard Lecuyer was surprised by this development and indicated that ". . his initial reaction was one of opposition."
CCM's interest in the SLOWPOKE 3 grew further as a result of another article in the Winnipeg Free Press on July 24, 1987, which reported AECL's Metro Dmytriw as saying that the Corporation had received an initial inquiry about the purchase of one from an interested party in Manitoba.
According to that article, Dmytriw also suggested that a SLOWPOKE 3 nuclear reactor might be a replacement for Winnipeg's aging central steam heating plant. The article pointed out that AECL had held no discussions with the city nor did city officials express any interest in the idea at the time.
Other groups had also been criticizing the SLOWPOKE 3. The Montreal Gazette, May 22, 1986, reported Norm Rubin of Energy Probe in Toronto as saying . . .(the idea is) "crazy." Rubin wondered how, in the event of an accident, a hospital or shopping mall could be evacuated, especially since the SLOWPOKE 3 would operate "unattended" for some periods of time.
The same Gazette article included similar concerns expressed by Gordon Edwards, President of the Montreal-based Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. Both Rubin and Edwards pointed to the unsolved nuclear waste problem as a good reason for not proceeding with the development and marketing of the SLOWPOKE 3 nuclear reactor.
Aside from the waste, safety, and economic questions surrounding the SLOWPOKE 3, CCM expressed concern over reactor security. An unattended reactor operating in a small community or a building in a large city could present unparalleled opportunities for anyone who might want to steal high-level nuclear waste. (The design called for spent fuel rods to be stored within each reactor, until removed to some other location.)
Other possible acts might include sabotaging the untended reactors themselves, or pumping out the water (which becomes more radioactive as the reactor operates), into a municipal system. Unforeseen and unanticipated damage and acts of terrorism are a real possibility when one considers the many unstable political situations around the world.
Even large power reactors have their security problems. According to the October 2, 1987 Critical Mass Energy Project's newsletter, Public Citizen, in the US, "Dozens of security breaches occurred at nuclear plant sites in 1986. These include vandalism and sabotage directed at reactor operations; use of firearms on plant sites by unauthorized persons; and increasing drug use among nuclear workers." Also, some workers have been found, literally, asleep at the switch.
My personal involvement with the SLOWPOKE, became even more intense when my wife, Phyl, and I moved from Manitoba to Québec, in 1988.
We had just arrived at the home of friends in the town of Beebe, in the Eastern Townships of Québec. It was March 15, 1988, and we were on a house hunting expedition.
Somewhat tired from the day's journey, which included a six-hour long delayed flight from Winnipeg, and a long drive in a rented car through a heavy snow storm from Montréal, we looked forward to some relaxation and good conversation that evening.
Our friends, however, stood by quietly watching, as we stared incredulously at the March 14 edition of the Sherbrooke, Québec, Record, which was propped up on their dining table.
Plastered across the front page was a story about AECL's plan to construct and operate a ten megawatt SLOWPOKE ("Safe Low Energy Critical Experiment") nuclear reactor at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS), the large University Medical Centre located in Québec’s Eastern Townships.
I quickly scanned the story, which someone had leaked to the newspaper, revealing AECL's plan to build the reactor for the stated purpose of heating the hospital.
AECL was to own and operate it, and the hospital would pay the heating bill. Most importantly, the reactor, the first of its kind, was planned to serve as a demonstration based on the two megawatt version (which we knew was still nowhere near full power)at the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment at Pinawa, Manitoba.
"I don't believe this," and "You've got to be kidding," were but a few (printable!) comments made by the two of us, as we read the lead article.
Our activities in Manitoba were well known to some of the environmental and peace activists in the Townships area. We had made contact with them during the 1985 controversy over a possible U.S. nuclear waste dump in northern Vermont, very close to the Canadian border.
When some of them heard that we were moving into the area, we were asked to join them in dealing with the new-to-Sherbrooke SLOWPOKE 3 issue.
Thus, a short time after our arrival into what we had hoped would surely be a relaxed new start in retirement life, Phyl and I were involved in strategy meetings with peace and ecology groups, a meeting with AECL and hospital officials, news conferences and media interviews.
It was as if we had never left Winnipeg.
Since my concern about the so-called SLOWPOKE 3 reactor had already started to grow over the past several years in Winnipeg, it seemed somehow appropriate to be involved in this new controversy.
The more I learned about the new mini-nuke, the less I liked it: It would use highly-enriched uranium which must be imported from other countries. It would create high-level radioactive waste, which would contain weapons usable plutonium. It would be marketed anywhere in the world. It would operate unattended for periods of time, leaving it vulnerable to those with malicious intent. Also, it would routinely emit radioactive gasses into the environment.
Yet, the plan now was to place such a machine in, of all places, a large teaching hospital, where, as is true of anything else designed by humans, accidents could, and did happen.
When Phyl and I finally moved from Winnipeg, we had put our belongings in storage as we continued to search for a house in the Eastern Townships. As it turned out, we did not find a house we liked before we sold our place in Winnipeg. So, we rented a furnished mobile home in a farming area near the town of Beebe.
We brought the essentials for living with us in our camper van which pulled our old 1960s'tent trailer from Winnipeg to the Townships.
However, I had packed one box of assorted files on nuclear waste issues in the tent trailer. Now, I am not especially a mystic, but it turned out that one of those files was full of papers on the SLOWPOKE reactor! It contained information which later proved to be very useful in shaping future events.
However, it now seemed as if our dream of "peace, quiet and contemplation" in the rolling hills of the Eastern Townships was not to be. [Our histories showed that we were probably never cut out for that kind of a life anyway!] For us, it would be the "Year of the SLOWPOKE."
The minutes of a February 16, 1988 meeting between AECL and the CHUS Hospital Board of Directors include an AECL quote that ". . . an appropriate strategy produces very little public reaction."
This time, however, AECL's "appropriate strategy" obviously did not take into account that someone(s) high up within the hospital's staff itself might have more than a few misgivings about the venture and would leak the information to the media.
The Townships Peace Group asked us to attend a May 2, 1988 meeting at the CHUS with hospital officials, AECL representatives, and persons concerned about the SLOWPOKE project.
We were already seated at the board room conference table when the AECL contingent arrived. Several AECL officials present from the Pinawa, Manitoba, Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment (WNRE), were visibly shaken when they saw us there. Of course, they did not know that we had very recently moved from Winnipeg to Québec. "What are you doing here?" asked one of them. "We live here." I retorted. I'll never forget the
astonished look on their faces.
The Robbins, former Concerned Citizens of Manitoba stalwarts, were probably the last two people they wanted to see that morning!
They were no doubt unhappy about the presence of others who also were at the meeting, including Gordon Edwards, well known nuclear critic from Montréal, and Max Krell, a local university professor, (and a very concerned nuclear physicist).
The hospital officials and AECL reminded me of a group of kids who had just got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I imagine that they all realized at that moment, that their "appropriate strategy" might have just gone down the tube!
Although good manners were observed throughout, it became quite obvious that the citizens' representatives were not going to buy in on the proposal.
It did not take long for a coalition of peace and environmental groups and other concerned individuals to take shape in the Eastern Townships. The group used the same initials used by the hospital, i.e., the "Coalition CHUS" (Continue Hydro, not Uranium for our Safety, or, in French, Continuer l'Hydro non l'Uranium pour notre Sécurité.)
After the initial flurry of organizational and media activity, Phyl and I settled into a relatively benign role of "behind the scenes" support to the mostly French speaking coalition. But I had one more moment in the spotlight, which Phyl provided for me.
She had carefully reviewed the contents of the SLOWPOKE file that we had brought with us from Winnipeg, and had found an amazingly frank, and startling statement by John Hillborn, the inventor of the SLOWPOKE reactor, concerning the possibility of nuclear accidents.
In a June, 1981 paper he co-authored for the Second Annual Meeting of the Canadian Nuclear Society in Ottawa,(AECL document No. 7438), Hillborn said that, "It is now well known that people will accept frequent, small disasters more readily than rare catastrophes."
Airplane crashes were used as an example. The paper continued,
"Although we may have to endure the legacy of Three Mile Island for many years, a decentralized system of small reactors which effectively eliminates the possibility of a single big accident may have a significant advantage in licensing, insuring, and gaining public acceptance. Eventually the public may accept accidents to small reactors to the same extent that they accept fires, explosions, and airplane crashes, as long as the consequences are not obviously worse. It would be unrealistic however, to expect many communities to welcome nuclear reactors within their boundaries until there are severe regional shortages of gas and electricity."
On June 22, 1988, I read this statement, without comment, at the Coalition's first press conference. The media jumped on it. The following day the quote was used in the lead editorial in the Sherbrooke Record . Hilborn's statement became one of the Coalition's, and the media's favorite items. It was an excellent example of the fact that one of our most powerful weapons against AECL was its own prose.
I was not alone in finding Hilborn's statement to be a chilling one, with its assessment of public reaction to "small" nuclear catastrophes. The 1980s witnessed bitter and protracted conflict and public concern over radioactive spills from discarded medical equipment in scrap yards, radioactive soil in housing developments, radioactive materials dropping from space
satellites, and missing quantities of plutonium.
The fact that there is no safe level of radiation was understood by the public. Increasingly, evidence points to negative health effects from the most negligible levels of radiation. And the public has become aware of the consequences from nuclear radiation in whatever forms and amounts. Even the negative side of natural radiation has become more evident. There is nothing to suggest that the public will, in Hilborn's terms, easily accept "small" nuclear disasters.
Coalition CHUS continued to raise questions about the safety of the reactor. An exchange of correspondence between an official of Canada's Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) and myself, revealed that the so-called "nuclear regulators" had no(!) safety information on the reactor. Their October 5, 1988 letter to me stated that "It is likely that the 10-mw reactor will be significantly different from the (2-mw) SDR." The letter also noted that "At this time the AECB does not have any detailed design information on the proposed 10-mw installation."
Not only was the 10-megawatt SLOWPOKE 3 an "experiment" in the true sense of the word, even its supposed prototype 2-mw version, at the WNRE, was still in its embryonic stages. AECB had reviewed that reactor and requested that AECL take a number of significant steps to improve its safety.
As the SLOWPOKE issue developed and the Coalition CHUS quickly grew during the Summer and Autumn of 1988, Phyl and I continued to provide it with advice, moral support, and assistance in developing letters and fact sheets
I was absolutely astounded at the energy and the effectiveness of the anti-SLOWPOKE coalition. Something was happening all the time. Meetings, mailings, radio and TV coverage, debates, button and t-shirts sales --- just about every legitimate, democratic, non-violent form of protest and expression was taking place.
By October, 1988, the movement had acquired a life of its own. There were so many media events, activities, and speakers' appearances going on that it was difficult just to keep track of them all.
As Coalition CHUS rapidly expanded, Phyl and I continued work in our behind the scenes role to supply information and ideas. For example, in one of her fact sheets Phyl included information about AECL's own stated policy of excluding pregnant women and small children from tours and open houses at the WNRE, which contained the 2 megawatt "prototype" of the SLOWPOKE.
Pregnant women and small children visit the CHUS medical centre every day for medical treatment. Would not a ten megawatt reactor at the hospital provide at least equal, if not greater risk? The point was not lost on the nurses at the hospital. Their union passed a unanimous resolution opposing the reactor, declaring it a public health risk.
By November, 1988, coalition support was estimated at twenty-five thousand, with almost ten organizations a week joining our forces. Much of the opposition came from the hospital staff itself. Politicians were falling over themselves to come onside.
The handwriting on the wall was writ large and clear. On December 20, 1988, we received the best Christmas present of all: the hospital Board of Directors announced its withdrawal from the SLOWPOKE project, a decision taken in spite of AECL's initial offer to absorb the five-to-seven million-dollar capital cost. Coalition CHUS had done its work well.
AECL folded its tents and left Sherbrooke. It had lost another round in its struggle to market its mini-nuke.
AECL's public relations and sales forces had again failed to convince any community that they had invented the perfect nuclear heating machine; one which they promoted as being inherently safe, and which would operate in the midst of a populated area without negative consequences, for at long as 30 years -- - even though the design of the reactor had not yet been finalized or approved!
Undaunted, the federal Crown Corporation continued to seek a location for a full-scale demonstration SLOWPOKE 3 to enhance the reactor's credibility in the eyes of potential foreign customers. But no one was buying. After two more failed attempts (one at a G.E. plant in Peterborough, Ontario, and another lengthy one at the University of Saskatchewan), the marketing project stalled.
A few years later, the two megawatt "prototype" at WNRE (which had never operated at full strength) was shut down. By November 1991, and forty-five million dollars later, the entire SLOWPOKE 3 project was consigned to oblivion.
In a 2007 article on “ Nuclear Smoke and Mirrors,” Jim Harding, a retired University of Regina, professor of environmental and justice studies commented on some of the Canadian reactor designs.
He wrote that “... the list of botched AECL designs is lengthy. There was the Organic Cooled Reactor in Manitoba, which was an expensive dead end. There was the Candu Boiling Light Water Reactor in Québec, which (without even including design costs) was a $126 million disaster. Then there was the Slowpoke Energy System, for which design work cost $45 million, which didn’t work properly. Next came the Candu-3, for which design work cost $75 million, which no one wanted. And the Candu-9, with design costs still secret, which was a no-go in South Korea. More recently AECL built the Maple Reactor at Chalk River, which threatens to become another technological and financial fiasco since the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is refusing to even license it for operation”.
The moral of this story is that there is no such thing as an inherently safe nuclear reactor. Those who contemplate going down that road should carefully assess the lessons from the past. If they do so, they might very well choose other, more preferable alternatives.
Walt Robbins
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
Click on "Nuke Droppings" for the Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
free online
Small nuclear reactors can range in power output from less that one up to several hundred megawatts.
More recently, prospects for a so-called nuclear renaissance have revitalized speculation about the design and use of small reactors in Canada. For example, in an interview with CBC News, in February, 2009, Premier Brad Wall said “... he hoped Saskatchewan could play a role developing small reactor technology. He went on to say the provincial government might be able to devote some resources to research and development in that area.”
A report by Saskatchewan’s Uranium Development Partnership, (UDP) included an upbeat statement that “because they require little or no refueling and produce both heat and electricity, small reactors could eventually compete with small-scale diesel, oil and gas generation as a power alternative in remote sites.” The report went on to state that, “Saskatchewan has the opportunity to participate in this market by partnering with a commercial technology developer on a demonstration project.”
Ah, but–the history of small reactors in Canada includes some very expensive “lemons,” something that should give pause to anyone seriously contemplating getting into that kind of business.
As an example, one of those not so successful small reactor efforts was the SLOWPOKE 3, a brainchild of Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (AECL).
The Slowpoke became an issue for me in 1986, when I was a spokesperson for the Concerned Citizens’ of Manitoba (CCM.), Canada, a nuclear waste watchdog group. After years of our lobbying, the Manitoba provincial government was poised to pass a bill which would prohibit the burial or long-term storage of high level nuclear waste in the Province.
AECL officials were quite upset over the upcoming legislation, one of their concerns being that the bill contained a clause which prohibited the storage of high-level nuclear waste originating from outside the Province for more than seven days. This, according to the AECL testimony, would result in its inability to store the waste from its new "Safe Low Power Kritical (sic) Experiment," (a.k.a. SLOWPOKE) at its Whiteshell, Manitoba based nuclear research station.
The SLOWPOKE 3 was to be a small (10 Megawatt) heat and isotope producing nuclear reactor that AECL was actively marketing around the world, even though it was still in the early stages of untested design. AECL maintained that the pending legislation would force it to set up waste storage facilities elsewhere at additional cost, and that Manitoba would lose "commercial benefits" from the SLOWPOKE 3 program.
It appeared that AECL planned to retrieve the waste from all the SLOWPOKE 3 reactors that it expected to sell in Canada, and abroad, and bring it to Manitoba for storage! Nevertheless, the Manitoba legislation was enacted into law.
However, that did not stop AECL from promoting its mini-nuke.
I recalled reading an article in the Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba, Leader of June 15, 1982, headlined "Nuclear Furnaces Could Soon Be Heating Your House." It went on to describe the small, unattended, SLOWPOKE reactor which could heat a building and require refueling only once every five years.
"Safe Low Power Kritical Experiment!" It was fascinating that AECL chose to use the word "Safe," to describe its new "baby" reactor. It left me with more apprehensions than I already had about its large power reactors, with the acronym, "CANDU," which lacked that vital word “Safe.” Would they now change CANDU to "SCANDU"?
Also, I wondered why the use of the word "experiment." After all, who wants to buy a radioactive "experiment" to heat their community centre or other buildings?
A demonstration 2-megawatt version of the SLOWPOKE 3 reactor began very low-power operation at AECL's Pinawa, Manitoba, Whiteshell research station on July 15, 1987. But well before that small demonstration model was up and running, the Crown Corporation was already actively marketing the non-existent 10 mw version in such places as China, Korea, Europe and Canada's own Northwest Territory.
By January, 1988, AECL had signed a memorandum of agreement with Hungary for a potential SLOWPOKE 3 sale.
A May 29, 1986, Winnipeg Free Press article headlined "Radioactive Waste Repository for Manitoba Planned by Agency," really caught our attention. AECL’s idea was to remove spent fuel from each SLOWPOKE 3 reactor every five to eight years. The thirty or forty fuel bundles would be placed in concrete cylinders at its research facilities at Pinawa, Manitoba and Chalk River, Ontario. Eventually, it was reported, the waste would go into the (still non-existent) permanent underground waste repository. CCM took the position that the Province should not permit storage of SLOWPOKE 3 waste and that (it should) ". . . block the buildup of anything which tends to take us closer to a nuclear waste repository in Manitoba."
CCM considered that if AECL started bringing its foreign customers' SLOWPOKE 3 excrement back to Canada, it would be well on the road to the full-scale commercial international radioactive waste dump about which CCM had been warning the public for so many years.
According to the article, Provincial Environment Minister Gerard Lecuyer was surprised by this development and indicated that ". . his initial reaction was one of opposition."
CCM's interest in the SLOWPOKE 3 grew further as a result of another article in the Winnipeg Free Press on July 24, 1987, which reported AECL's Metro Dmytriw as saying that the Corporation had received an initial inquiry about the purchase of one from an interested party in Manitoba.
According to that article, Dmytriw also suggested that a SLOWPOKE 3 nuclear reactor might be a replacement for Winnipeg's aging central steam heating plant. The article pointed out that AECL had held no discussions with the city nor did city officials express any interest in the idea at the time.
Other groups had also been criticizing the SLOWPOKE 3. The Montreal Gazette, May 22, 1986, reported Norm Rubin of Energy Probe in Toronto as saying . . .(the idea is) "crazy." Rubin wondered how, in the event of an accident, a hospital or shopping mall could be evacuated, especially since the SLOWPOKE 3 would operate "unattended" for some periods of time.
The same Gazette article included similar concerns expressed by Gordon Edwards, President of the Montreal-based Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. Both Rubin and Edwards pointed to the unsolved nuclear waste problem as a good reason for not proceeding with the development and marketing of the SLOWPOKE 3 nuclear reactor.
Aside from the waste, safety, and economic questions surrounding the SLOWPOKE 3, CCM expressed concern over reactor security. An unattended reactor operating in a small community or a building in a large city could present unparalleled opportunities for anyone who might want to steal high-level nuclear waste. (The design called for spent fuel rods to be stored within each reactor, until removed to some other location.)
Other possible acts might include sabotaging the untended reactors themselves, or pumping out the water (which becomes more radioactive as the reactor operates), into a municipal system. Unforeseen and unanticipated damage and acts of terrorism are a real possibility when one considers the many unstable political situations around the world.
Even large power reactors have their security problems. According to the October 2, 1987 Critical Mass Energy Project's newsletter, Public Citizen, in the US, "Dozens of security breaches occurred at nuclear plant sites in 1986. These include vandalism and sabotage directed at reactor operations; use of firearms on plant sites by unauthorized persons; and increasing drug use among nuclear workers." Also, some workers have been found, literally, asleep at the switch.
My personal involvement with the SLOWPOKE, became even more intense when my wife, Phyl, and I moved from Manitoba to Québec, in 1988.
We had just arrived at the home of friends in the town of Beebe, in the Eastern Townships of Québec. It was March 15, 1988, and we were on a house hunting expedition.
Somewhat tired from the day's journey, which included a six-hour long delayed flight from Winnipeg, and a long drive in a rented car through a heavy snow storm from Montréal, we looked forward to some relaxation and good conversation that evening.
Our friends, however, stood by quietly watching, as we stared incredulously at the March 14 edition of the Sherbrooke, Québec, Record, which was propped up on their dining table.
Plastered across the front page was a story about AECL's plan to construct and operate a ten megawatt SLOWPOKE ("Safe Low Energy Critical Experiment") nuclear reactor at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS), the large University Medical Centre located in Québec’s Eastern Townships.
I quickly scanned the story, which someone had leaked to the newspaper, revealing AECL's plan to build the reactor for the stated purpose of heating the hospital.
AECL was to own and operate it, and the hospital would pay the heating bill. Most importantly, the reactor, the first of its kind, was planned to serve as a demonstration based on the two megawatt version (which we knew was still nowhere near full power)at the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment at Pinawa, Manitoba.
"I don't believe this," and "You've got to be kidding," were but a few (printable!) comments made by the two of us, as we read the lead article.
Our activities in Manitoba were well known to some of the environmental and peace activists in the Townships area. We had made contact with them during the 1985 controversy over a possible U.S. nuclear waste dump in northern Vermont, very close to the Canadian border.
When some of them heard that we were moving into the area, we were asked to join them in dealing with the new-to-Sherbrooke SLOWPOKE 3 issue.
Thus, a short time after our arrival into what we had hoped would surely be a relaxed new start in retirement life, Phyl and I were involved in strategy meetings with peace and ecology groups, a meeting with AECL and hospital officials, news conferences and media interviews.
It was as if we had never left Winnipeg.
Since my concern about the so-called SLOWPOKE 3 reactor had already started to grow over the past several years in Winnipeg, it seemed somehow appropriate to be involved in this new controversy.
The more I learned about the new mini-nuke, the less I liked it: It would use highly-enriched uranium which must be imported from other countries. It would create high-level radioactive waste, which would contain weapons usable plutonium. It would be marketed anywhere in the world. It would operate unattended for periods of time, leaving it vulnerable to those with malicious intent. Also, it would routinely emit radioactive gasses into the environment.
Yet, the plan now was to place such a machine in, of all places, a large teaching hospital, where, as is true of anything else designed by humans, accidents could, and did happen.
When Phyl and I finally moved from Winnipeg, we had put our belongings in storage as we continued to search for a house in the Eastern Townships. As it turned out, we did not find a house we liked before we sold our place in Winnipeg. So, we rented a furnished mobile home in a farming area near the town of Beebe.
We brought the essentials for living with us in our camper van which pulled our old 1960s'tent trailer from Winnipeg to the Townships.
However, I had packed one box of assorted files on nuclear waste issues in the tent trailer. Now, I am not especially a mystic, but it turned out that one of those files was full of papers on the SLOWPOKE reactor! It contained information which later proved to be very useful in shaping future events.
However, it now seemed as if our dream of "peace, quiet and contemplation" in the rolling hills of the Eastern Townships was not to be. [Our histories showed that we were probably never cut out for that kind of a life anyway!] For us, it would be the "Year of the SLOWPOKE."
The minutes of a February 16, 1988 meeting between AECL and the CHUS Hospital Board of Directors include an AECL quote that ". . . an appropriate strategy produces very little public reaction."
This time, however, AECL's "appropriate strategy" obviously did not take into account that someone(s) high up within the hospital's staff itself might have more than a few misgivings about the venture and would leak the information to the media.
The Townships Peace Group asked us to attend a May 2, 1988 meeting at the CHUS with hospital officials, AECL representatives, and persons concerned about the SLOWPOKE project.
We were already seated at the board room conference table when the AECL contingent arrived. Several AECL officials present from the Pinawa, Manitoba, Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment (WNRE), were visibly shaken when they saw us there. Of course, they did not know that we had very recently moved from Winnipeg to Québec. "What are you doing here?" asked one of them. "We live here." I retorted. I'll never forget the
astonished look on their faces.
The Robbins, former Concerned Citizens of Manitoba stalwarts, were probably the last two people they wanted to see that morning!
They were no doubt unhappy about the presence of others who also were at the meeting, including Gordon Edwards, well known nuclear critic from Montréal, and Max Krell, a local university professor, (and a very concerned nuclear physicist).
The hospital officials and AECL reminded me of a group of kids who had just got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I imagine that they all realized at that moment, that their "appropriate strategy" might have just gone down the tube!
Although good manners were observed throughout, it became quite obvious that the citizens' representatives were not going to buy in on the proposal.
It did not take long for a coalition of peace and environmental groups and other concerned individuals to take shape in the Eastern Townships. The group used the same initials used by the hospital, i.e., the "Coalition CHUS" (Continue Hydro, not Uranium for our Safety, or, in French, Continuer l'Hydro non l'Uranium pour notre Sécurité.)
After the initial flurry of organizational and media activity, Phyl and I settled into a relatively benign role of "behind the scenes" support to the mostly French speaking coalition. But I had one more moment in the spotlight, which Phyl provided for me.
She had carefully reviewed the contents of the SLOWPOKE file that we had brought with us from Winnipeg, and had found an amazingly frank, and startling statement by John Hillborn, the inventor of the SLOWPOKE reactor, concerning the possibility of nuclear accidents.
In a June, 1981 paper he co-authored for the Second Annual Meeting of the Canadian Nuclear Society in Ottawa,(AECL document No. 7438), Hillborn said that, "It is now well known that people will accept frequent, small disasters more readily than rare catastrophes."
Airplane crashes were used as an example. The paper continued,
"Although we may have to endure the legacy of Three Mile Island for many years, a decentralized system of small reactors which effectively eliminates the possibility of a single big accident may have a significant advantage in licensing, insuring, and gaining public acceptance. Eventually the public may accept accidents to small reactors to the same extent that they accept fires, explosions, and airplane crashes, as long as the consequences are not obviously worse. It would be unrealistic however, to expect many communities to welcome nuclear reactors within their boundaries until there are severe regional shortages of gas and electricity."
On June 22, 1988, I read this statement, without comment, at the Coalition's first press conference. The media jumped on it. The following day the quote was used in the lead editorial in the Sherbrooke Record . Hilborn's statement became one of the Coalition's, and the media's favorite items. It was an excellent example of the fact that one of our most powerful weapons against AECL was its own prose.
I was not alone in finding Hilborn's statement to be a chilling one, with its assessment of public reaction to "small" nuclear catastrophes. The 1980s witnessed bitter and protracted conflict and public concern over radioactive spills from discarded medical equipment in scrap yards, radioactive soil in housing developments, radioactive materials dropping from space
satellites, and missing quantities of plutonium.
The fact that there is no safe level of radiation was understood by the public. Increasingly, evidence points to negative health effects from the most negligible levels of radiation. And the public has become aware of the consequences from nuclear radiation in whatever forms and amounts. Even the negative side of natural radiation has become more evident. There is nothing to suggest that the public will, in Hilborn's terms, easily accept "small" nuclear disasters.
Coalition CHUS continued to raise questions about the safety of the reactor. An exchange of correspondence between an official of Canada's Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) and myself, revealed that the so-called "nuclear regulators" had no(!) safety information on the reactor. Their October 5, 1988 letter to me stated that "It is likely that the 10-mw reactor will be significantly different from the (2-mw) SDR." The letter also noted that "At this time the AECB does not have any detailed design information on the proposed 10-mw installation."
Not only was the 10-megawatt SLOWPOKE 3 an "experiment" in the true sense of the word, even its supposed prototype 2-mw version, at the WNRE, was still in its embryonic stages. AECB had reviewed that reactor and requested that AECL take a number of significant steps to improve its safety.
As the SLOWPOKE issue developed and the Coalition CHUS quickly grew during the Summer and Autumn of 1988, Phyl and I continued to provide it with advice, moral support, and assistance in developing letters and fact sheets
I was absolutely astounded at the energy and the effectiveness of the anti-SLOWPOKE coalition. Something was happening all the time. Meetings, mailings, radio and TV coverage, debates, button and t-shirts sales --- just about every legitimate, democratic, non-violent form of protest and expression was taking place.
By October, 1988, the movement had acquired a life of its own. There were so many media events, activities, and speakers' appearances going on that it was difficult just to keep track of them all.
As Coalition CHUS rapidly expanded, Phyl and I continued work in our behind the scenes role to supply information and ideas. For example, in one of her fact sheets Phyl included information about AECL's own stated policy of excluding pregnant women and small children from tours and open houses at the WNRE, which contained the 2 megawatt "prototype" of the SLOWPOKE.
Pregnant women and small children visit the CHUS medical centre every day for medical treatment. Would not a ten megawatt reactor at the hospital provide at least equal, if not greater risk? The point was not lost on the nurses at the hospital. Their union passed a unanimous resolution opposing the reactor, declaring it a public health risk.
By November, 1988, coalition support was estimated at twenty-five thousand, with almost ten organizations a week joining our forces. Much of the opposition came from the hospital staff itself. Politicians were falling over themselves to come onside.
The handwriting on the wall was writ large and clear. On December 20, 1988, we received the best Christmas present of all: the hospital Board of Directors announced its withdrawal from the SLOWPOKE project, a decision taken in spite of AECL's initial offer to absorb the five-to-seven million-dollar capital cost. Coalition CHUS had done its work well.
AECL folded its tents and left Sherbrooke. It had lost another round in its struggle to market its mini-nuke.
AECL's public relations and sales forces had again failed to convince any community that they had invented the perfect nuclear heating machine; one which they promoted as being inherently safe, and which would operate in the midst of a populated area without negative consequences, for at long as 30 years -- - even though the design of the reactor had not yet been finalized or approved!
Undaunted, the federal Crown Corporation continued to seek a location for a full-scale demonstration SLOWPOKE 3 to enhance the reactor's credibility in the eyes of potential foreign customers. But no one was buying. After two more failed attempts (one at a G.E. plant in Peterborough, Ontario, and another lengthy one at the University of Saskatchewan), the marketing project stalled.
A few years later, the two megawatt "prototype" at WNRE (which had never operated at full strength) was shut down. By November 1991, and forty-five million dollars later, the entire SLOWPOKE 3 project was consigned to oblivion.
In a 2007 article on “ Nuclear Smoke and Mirrors,” Jim Harding, a retired University of Regina, professor of environmental and justice studies commented on some of the Canadian reactor designs.
He wrote that “... the list of botched AECL designs is lengthy. There was the Organic Cooled Reactor in Manitoba, which was an expensive dead end. There was the Candu Boiling Light Water Reactor in Québec, which (without even including design costs) was a $126 million disaster. Then there was the Slowpoke Energy System, for which design work cost $45 million, which didn’t work properly. Next came the Candu-3, for which design work cost $75 million, which no one wanted. And the Candu-9, with design costs still secret, which was a no-go in South Korea. More recently AECL built the Maple Reactor at Chalk River, which threatens to become another technological and financial fiasco since the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is refusing to even license it for operation”.
The moral of this story is that there is no such thing as an inherently safe nuclear reactor. Those who contemplate going down that road should carefully assess the lessons from the past. If they do so, they might very well choose other, more preferable alternatives.
Walt Robbins
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
Click on "Nuke Droppings" for the Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
free online
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WATER, ROCKS AND NUCLEAR WASTE
HOORAY! We hit water, and lots of it! At two hundred forty feet the pinkish gray granite rock gave way to a reddish color and at two hundred and eighty feet our well "came in." Water was being pumped from the hole at the rate of forty gallons per minute, and had leveled off at a depth of sixteen feet from the surface. Our eastern Manitoba household would have plenty of clean, cold water.
Could there be a veritable labyrinth of rivers and streams underground, running cold and deep, through the ancient Pre-Cambrian rock of the Canadian Shield? The strangest thought of all was that we had tampered with some of the deep secrets of the world below us. Nature was permanently altered and had given to us one of her most valued treasures. For that we were thankful.
While we were well drilling on our property, Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd., (AECL), at its nearby nuclear research station, was conducting test drilling as a prelude for an underground nuclear waste research laboratory (URL) in our municipality. It’s officials initially insisted that the granite rock formation in the area had “remarkably few cracks.” However, during the major excavation of the URL during the early 1980's, an extensive water-bearing fracture zone was encountered. Several cracks, including a large fracture resulted in the intake of considerable amounts of ground water. requiring pumps to run continuously.
Probably the most descriptive statement about the wet condition of the URL came from Walter Patterson, when he spoke at a 1986 nuclear waste conference in Winnipeg. Trained in nuclear physics and residing in the UK, he was involved with many aspects of nuclear technology for decades. He visited the URL underground facility in as an advisor to a Select Environmental Committee of the British Parliament. After the visit, the Parliamentarians asked his opinion of the operation. Patterson told the conferees, that for the first time on the entire Canadian trip, "I had to say I had not the faintest idea.. I do not know why they are doing what they are doing: because if this is supposed to be research for an underground repository for final disposal of spent fuel, everybody in the business knows that the one thing you have to avoid is water -- and the place is soaking! Absolutely soaking! Up to here (gesturing) in water!"
My comment to reporters after I visited the URL excavation was “if you plan to go down into that hole, be sure to take your rain boots, an umbrella and a life raft. When you think about nuclear waste going into that wet hole, it gives you the chills.”
Over the ensuing years, our own personal well drilling experience in 1980 has always been in the back of my mind whenever the subject of deep underground “disposal” of irradiated fuel waste comes up. Common sense informs us that ground water can eventually corrode waste canisters and carry lethal radioactive substances into the environment above. Given the toxic nature and longevity of the irradiated fuel wastes created by the operation of nuclear reactors, few would disagree that the presence of groundwater presents a serious problem for the integrity of an underground nuclear waste repository.
And, what about these lethal substances?
According to Wikipedia, “Certain radioactive elements (such as plutonium-239) in ‘spent’ fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other living beings for hundreds of thousands of years. Other radioisotopes remain hazardous for millions of years. Thus, these wastes must be shielded for centuries and isolated from the living environment for millennia. Some elements, such as Iodine-131, have a short half-life (around 8 days in this case) and thus they will cease to be a problem much more quickly than other, longer-lived, decay products but their activity is much greater initially.”
Hundreds of thousands and millions of years? It may be easier to wrap your mind around the concept of a billion or trillion dollars!
In the U.S., Yucca Mountain, Nevada was chosen as the preferred site for an irradiated nuclear fuel waste repository.
One of the reasons the Nevada location was originally selected was because of its arid, desert location. Yucca Mountain (geologically, a tuff formation) would be nice and dry. Or so it was thought.
The October 15, 1994 issue of the Las Vegas Sun, reported that “. . Radioactive water from past nuclear testing has penetrated to layers below the proposed storage site. Scientists studying Yucca Mountain as a place to store the nation's high-level nuclear waste have found evidence that surface water from the days of atmospheric nuclear testing probably seeped to layers beneath the proposed repository site,” The Department of Energy spokesman, Greg Cook was reported as saying ". . . the finding is obviously of concern to us because ground water intrusion within the repository would make it more difficult to contain for 10,000 years the 77,000 tons of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors that the government wants to entomb there."
Carl Johnson, a geologist for the State of Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, which monitors the federal Yucca Mountain studies, said that ". . . the finding means 'at least one very fast pathway' exists for ground water to move from the surface to below the repository site." Johnson said that ". . . samples collected from a bore hole on the southeast side of the repository site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, contained tritium and chlorine-36 isotopes, residuals from nuclear weapons testing. That means the water seeped from the surface to a depth of 1,450 feet within the 49 years since the first US nuclear weapons test was conducted in New Mexico and probably since nuclear testing began in Nevada in 1951."
Over the years, billions of dollars have been poured into the Yucca Mountain Project. In 2009 it experienced major cuts to its budget at the hands of the Obama Administration. It’s future as a nuclear waste repository lies in doubt.
The latest Canadian proclamation about the suitability of an underground repository (this one for low and intermediate level radioactive waste) comes from Ontario Power Generation (OPG). Its plan is for a deep geological repository (DGR) at the Bruce nuclear facility near the shore of Lake Huron.
In media reports, OPG has stated that "There is a consensus in our research that shows the natural barriers will help protect the repository," and that "The limestone bedrock formations that are there have an extremely low rate of permeability. Also, there is a cap of shale 200 meters (about 656 feet) above the repository area that would act as a protective layer."
That rhetoric is an echo of earlier optimistic “dry rock” expectations. What will they find in the limestone excavation? Based on the URL (granite) experience, and the Yucca Mountain (tuff) one, can we anticipate water logged caverns feeding into Lake Huron?
But the biggest question of all is what will the industry-dominated Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) turn up in its ongoing search for a willing community to “host” a repository for Canada’s irradiated nuclear fuel waste? Even if some community in Canada does volunteer for the “undertaking,” any water found within its underground natural barriers would still be a major deterrent.
“Water, water, everywhere.” It’s been nearly 30 years since the Underground Research Laboratory was excavated and over 20 years since the Yucca Mountain project was started. The time has come to look for other methods to manage irradiated nuclear fuel waste. In the absence of an acceptable solution, the most rational and logical first step is to phase out its production.
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
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Proposed Radioactive Waste Dump on Lake Huron
An unbelievable proposal by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) for a deep underground radioactive waste repository a half mile from the shore of Lake Huron is in the works. If the plan succeeds, all of Ontario's “low and intermediate” level radioactive garbage, will eventually be transported to and permanently buried at the site, which is part of the extensive Bruce nuclear complex.
What is low and intermediate? Anything radioactive, from mops and clothing, to reactor tubes and components, is included in the categorization. The "intermediate" level waste requires special handling and can pose risks for significant periods of time.
But “low and intermediate” are arbitrary and fuzzy categories based primarily on the types of material and the overall gamma radiation dose rates. Many observers believe that this is a totally inadequate method for determining the ultimate risks these materials could pose to the environment and especially to human health.. What is needed is a complete inventory of the specific radionuclides and their inherent radio-toxic characteristics and capabilities to do biological harm over specified periods of time. To the best of my knowledge, no such complete analysis of the elements in so-called low and intermediate waste has been undertaken.
We are told that nuclear reactor fuel waste will not be placed in this facility. But this proposed repository could easily be a “Trojan Horse” for a full scale geological dump for “high-level” irradiated reactor fuel bundles, i.e., the really hot, lethal and incredibly nasty, radioactive stuff! More about that in a moment.
While thinking about this issue, it is important to bear in mind that any amount of ionizing radiation increases cancer risks, as concluded by the U.S. National Academy of Science (NAS) report on radiation risk, (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation).
When the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) issued its draft Environmental Impact Statement guidelines for this project for public comment, I raised several salient points in my response:
Why, I asked, was the deep underground repository option chosen?
The explanation in the proponent’s (Ontario Power Authority’s) original proposal was that "The deep geologic repository is being pursued as the preferred technology because of its greater margin of safety."
It seemed to me that the proponent must explain exactly why an underground facility of this kind would provide a greater margin of safety than the alternatives identified in its proposal. I understand that some other countries such as the Czech Republic and Australia favor near surface engineered facilities for containment and monitoring of low and intermediate level radioactive wastes.
Why would anyone want to construct such a site so near to one of the Great Lakes (Lake Huron)?
Lake Huron is one of the major bodies of fresh water in North America–part of the Great Lakes System. I believe that the proponent should be required to demonstrate why such a facility is to be sited on the shores of this lake. It is possible that any leaking radioactive material from the repository could impact both Canadians and U.S. residents.
I requested that the proponent be required to give a detailed explanation as to why it did not seek an alternative inland underground site which would be clearly outside of the geological zone that could affect the Great Lakes, in order to completely avoid the possibility of radioactive contamination of the lakes. There should be zero tolerance for the permanent geological emplacement of any radioactive wastes in the Great Lakes basin. It is simply common sense!
But the big question for me is: Could this project be eventually extended to accommodate nuclear fuel waste?
The guideline must deal more directly with the question of the possible future expansion of the proposed facility to accommodate nuclear fuel waste. Simple verbal assurances from contemporary individuals and organizations are meaningless in view of the lengthy isolation time frames required for much radioactive waste and irradiated nuclear fuel waste..
The main questions I raised in my comments are:
Why did Canada’s (industry dominated) Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), in its final report in 2004, identify the types of rock formations which happen to be present at the proposed Bruce nuclear complex as being suitable for permanent underground storage of irradiated nuclear fuel waste? Previously, granite rock of the Canadian Shield was considered the preferred host medium.
Why is the limestone rock at the site considered suitable for any kind or level of radioactive waste, given the well-known connection between limestone and underground water sources?
Why, indeed, is this proposal for a radioactive waste repository on the shores of Lake Huron being contemplated at all?
Get involved!
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
Click on "Nuke Droppings" for the Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
free online
What is low and intermediate? Anything radioactive, from mops and clothing, to reactor tubes and components, is included in the categorization. The "intermediate" level waste requires special handling and can pose risks for significant periods of time.
But “low and intermediate” are arbitrary and fuzzy categories based primarily on the types of material and the overall gamma radiation dose rates. Many observers believe that this is a totally inadequate method for determining the ultimate risks these materials could pose to the environment and especially to human health.. What is needed is a complete inventory of the specific radionuclides and their inherent radio-toxic characteristics and capabilities to do biological harm over specified periods of time. To the best of my knowledge, no such complete analysis of the elements in so-called low and intermediate waste has been undertaken.
We are told that nuclear reactor fuel waste will not be placed in this facility. But this proposed repository could easily be a “Trojan Horse” for a full scale geological dump for “high-level” irradiated reactor fuel bundles, i.e., the really hot, lethal and incredibly nasty, radioactive stuff! More about that in a moment.
While thinking about this issue, it is important to bear in mind that any amount of ionizing radiation increases cancer risks, as concluded by the U.S. National Academy of Science (NAS) report on radiation risk, (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation).
When the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) issued its draft Environmental Impact Statement guidelines for this project for public comment, I raised several salient points in my response:
Why, I asked, was the deep underground repository option chosen?
The explanation in the proponent’s (Ontario Power Authority’s) original proposal was that "The deep geologic repository is being pursued as the preferred technology because of its greater margin of safety."
It seemed to me that the proponent must explain exactly why an underground facility of this kind would provide a greater margin of safety than the alternatives identified in its proposal. I understand that some other countries such as the Czech Republic and Australia favor near surface engineered facilities for containment and monitoring of low and intermediate level radioactive wastes.
Why would anyone want to construct such a site so near to one of the Great Lakes (Lake Huron)?
Lake Huron is one of the major bodies of fresh water in North America–part of the Great Lakes System. I believe that the proponent should be required to demonstrate why such a facility is to be sited on the shores of this lake. It is possible that any leaking radioactive material from the repository could impact both Canadians and U.S. residents.
I requested that the proponent be required to give a detailed explanation as to why it did not seek an alternative inland underground site which would be clearly outside of the geological zone that could affect the Great Lakes, in order to completely avoid the possibility of radioactive contamination of the lakes. There should be zero tolerance for the permanent geological emplacement of any radioactive wastes in the Great Lakes basin. It is simply common sense!
But the big question for me is: Could this project be eventually extended to accommodate nuclear fuel waste?
The guideline must deal more directly with the question of the possible future expansion of the proposed facility to accommodate nuclear fuel waste. Simple verbal assurances from contemporary individuals and organizations are meaningless in view of the lengthy isolation time frames required for much radioactive waste and irradiated nuclear fuel waste..
The main questions I raised in my comments are:
Why did Canada’s (industry dominated) Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), in its final report in 2004, identify the types of rock formations which happen to be present at the proposed Bruce nuclear complex as being suitable for permanent underground storage of irradiated nuclear fuel waste? Previously, granite rock of the Canadian Shield was considered the preferred host medium.
Why is the limestone rock at the site considered suitable for any kind or level of radioactive waste, given the well-known connection between limestone and underground water sources?
Why, indeed, is this proposal for a radioactive waste repository on the shores of Lake Huron being contemplated at all?
Get involved!
Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
Click on "Nuke Droppings" for the Great Canadian Nuclear Waste Saga
free online
No replies - reply
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