Nuclear waste: all talk and studies
Re: Fight over Ontario nuclear waste disposal reveals hurdle in Liberal’s climate plan, Feb. 3.
Ontario Power Generation’s plans for storing low-level radioactive wastes at Bruce have hit a roadblock.
Here we go again … or don’t. In 1986, the nuclear regulator, then called the Atomic Energy Control
Board, required Eldorado Nuclear to find a safer storage for low-level but long-lived radioactive wastes from refinery operations near Port Hope, Ontario. Eldorado came up with a proposal to put the wastes in geological formations roughly similar to what Ontario Power is proposing. This was technically a very good proposal, as is Ontario Power’s, but public reaction and the NIMBY syndrome caused the government to intervene, take control of the wastes and commit to finding a “willing” site. The government even offered unspecified benefits to the willing site.
Ten years later, no willing site could be found except Deep
River at the Chalk River site, but the government would not pay the asked-for benefits. Now those wastes are still in the Port Hope area but in a better on-surface facility than the original, but which is less safe and secure than what Eldorado Nuclear proposed in the first place.
It looks like the same sort of thing might happen at Bruce.
The wastes will remain in the “back yard” of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation but in a less safe and secure facility, requiring perpetual human monitoring.
Tom Spears is right on the mark when he writes that no big project can be built … without making some people very upset.” Judging from the remarks of Chief Lester Anoquot, it appears that the Saugeen Ojibway Nation will want some sort of benefit in return for their consent. Very wily of him. If I were Ontario Power, I would leave the wastes where they are (they are safe enough for the present) and let the government take care of it along with nuclear fuel wastes.
So far the only action by successive governments on nuclear fuel wastes is a lot of talk andstudies, even though the technology has been available for decades.
John Beare, Kanata