Niagara on nuclear waste route

Trucks loaded with liquid nuclear waste could be rolling down highways within days – likely travelling through Niagara on their way into the United States.

But seven U.S. environmental groups have teamed up to launch a lawsuit against the United States government and its Department of Energy (DoE) in the hope of stopping the shipments before they begin.

A November, 2015, DoE report, which concluded that an environmental impact statement on the plan would not be necessary, says up to 150 shipments of liquid nuclear waste will be hauled by transport truck from the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in Chalk River, Ont., a community near Algonquin Park, to a disposal site in Savannah River, S.C., 1,700 kilometres away.

Each shipment will include four 58.1-litre stainless steel containers, for a total of 232 litres of nuclear waste per trip. Those containers will be placed inside cylindrical steel nuclear transport casks, which will then be loaded into typical shipping containers and loaded onto trucks. The project is expected to continue for several years.

The nuclear waste is a byproduct of the process used at the Chalk River laboratories to create medical radioisotopes from highly enriched uranium originally produced in the U.S. It’s being shipped back to the U.S. as part of a 2010 agreement to repatriate the radioactive material, costing the Canadian government about $60

Niagara-on-the-Lake resident Gracia Janes, the environment convener for the National Council of Women of Canada who has lobbied against the plan, described the material being transported as “absolutely deadly stuff.”

According to the lawsuit, filed Aug. 12 in Washington, D.C., the thick yellowy-green liquid being shipped contains highly enriched uranyl nitrate, highly enriched uranium, radioactive varieties of cesium, niobium, zirconium, rhodium, rubidium, iodine, xenon, tellurium, barium, lanthanum, cerium, strontium, praseodymium, neodymium, europium, neptunium and plutonium.

Although environmental groups believe shipments could begin in September, that information could not be confirmed. It’s classified. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission spokesman Aurèle Gervais called it “prescribed information.”

But western New York Congressman Brian Higgins suspects the DoE plans to start shipping material at sometime in September.

Although Higgins has spent the past few years raising concerns about the plan in the U.S. Congress, plans are apparently continuing to move forward anyway.

Nevertheless, Higgins said he isn’t finished yet.

“Bureaucracies try to wear you down. They will ignore, they will persist, thinking you’re going to go away,” he said. “I’m not going away.”

“We are using every leverage point we can to make people aware, including other federal institutions, that what the Department of Energy is doing here is reckless and highly irresponsible.”

Although recent the lawsuit asks for an injunction to halt the shipments until an environmental impact statement is completed, even if the lawsuit is successful it might not stop all the shipments.

Kevin Kamps, the radioactive waste watchdog for Maryland-based Beyond Nuclear, one of the organizations listed among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said shipments could begin any day, but a court date has yet to be set for the lawsuit.

“We would hope that the Department of Energy would agree to put the brakes on for now, until our legal proceeding plays itself out,” Kamps said.

Higgins is also calling for a stop to the plans.

“If they want a fight, they’re going to get a fight,” he said. “I think it’s incumbent on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to put an immediate halt to this until a full environmental review has been done and a threat assessment is done, using current information, not information that is two decades old and predates Sept. 11, 2001.”

Higgins is concerned about the use of the Peace Bridge in the proposed route, one of the busiest border crossings between the two countries.

“It’s only three lanes,” he said. “Consequently, trucks are stuck on the bridge idling for inordinate periods of time.”

Niagara Regional council has taken a stand on the issue, too. On June 11, 2015, councillors ratified a motion opposing any shipment of radioactive liquid waste, and urging the governments of Canada and the U.S. to halt the shipment of high-level radioactive liquid waste pending the outcome of public consultations on the advisability and the potential adverse impacts of the proposed shipments, as well as alternative procedures.

Lincoln Regional Coun. Bill Hodgson said he was concerned at the time the motion was passed, but he’s “more alarmed now that it seems that it’s imminent, and really no one with authority has stepped forward and said, ‘Let’s rethink the movement of this stuff.’”

“This is a really toxic soup. This is not kid’s play,” he said.

Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati shares the concerns about the plans.

“There’s always a concern,” he said.

However, he said there are many dangerous materials being shipped along highways everyday.

“I’m sure they will take all the precautions necessary,” Diodati said.

Regional Chairman Alan Caslin said it’s an issue that remains on Niagara Region’s radar.

“It’s something we’re trying to work through, and there’s more work to do yet,” Caslin said.

St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik said the waste will be shipped through a lot of communities on its way to its desitnation.

But as the mayor of potentially one of those cities, Sendzik said he’s “confident that both the regulators and tyhe transport company have put in place the proper protections controls that will ensure the utmost safety of the public is priority No. 1.”

However, he said there is “always a margin of error and whatever product is shipped either by rail, by ship or by road.”

While Sendzik said he understands the need for security, he said first responders within the city need to be informed about the shipments.

Hodgson said he met with both Vance Badawey and Chris Bittle following last year’s federal election and told Niagara’s Liberal members of Parliament about the Region’s motion.

“I just wanted them to know, we have a position and we’re really not getting anywhere,” he said.

Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop said he’d prefer not to have those shipments travelling through the town.

“We have good reason to be concerned,” he said. “You look at traffic backups, you look at delays at the bridge, the potential for collisions and the potential impacts on communities.”

Redekop said there have been “unduly long delays” at the Peace Bridge recently because of inadequate human resources, and they happen frequently in both directions across the bridge.

“It’s a big concern for us and we know it’s a major issue that has to be addressed, but we’re not really too keen on the idea of it going by land through communities over an international bridge where there are traffic issues,” Redekop said.

Butconsideringthelackofresponse from decision-makers, Hodgson said he may bring the issue back to regional council “to get council to once again speak out.”

“If I see a sense a risk that is not being mitigated properly in my community it’d be totally irresponsible if we didn’t at least raise the alarm bells,” he said.

Bittle said he understands the concerns in the community, however, he is confident that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has safety protocols in place.

“I’ve been advised that there are 20-million transports of nuclear material around he world each year. It’s done safely. It’s done with the highest regulations. It’s one of the highest classes of hazardous goods that’s trantsported in Canada. It’s done safely,” said Bittle, who represents the St. Catharines riding.

Badawey said he has offered to facilitate a meeting between concerned groups and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) representatives, to “go over any concerns or any information that they have.”

“To my knowledge, the (concerned groups) haven’t taken advantage of that yet,” said the Niagara Centre riding’s federal representative.

Badawey said that invitation still stands.

“The CNSC staff are willing to meet with anyone with respect to information that they may require,” he said.

Janes said environment groups have obtained a preliminary route for the trucks from the Peace Bridge south into the U.S., but the specific route through Canada remains classified information.

“That is part of the problem,” Hodgson said. “Nobody will actually know the route for security reasons. What that means is if there actually is an accident, how prepared are we going to be? How prepared is anyone going to be?”

Information posted on the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission website says the containers undergo stringent testing before they can be certified by both the U.S. and Canadian authorities, including dropping the casks from a height of nine metres, puncture testing and thermal testing.

But if one of those containers were to break, Janes said it would be a disaster.

“If it did break open, if it did get down to what’s in there, it’s radioactive material that would take an awfully long time – thousands of years – to actually disappear, if it ever does disappear,” said Janes, who first brought the issue to regional council’s attention during a delegation in February, 2015.

“It would go into the groundwater and it could be in a community. We’re not sure where it’s going,” she said. “Or there could be a fire, and it could be sending off plumes of we don’t know what.”

She said it’s “not quite Chernobyl, but I don’t know.”

The November 2015 DoE report also looked at worst-case scenarios, including the potential for radioactive liquid to spill on the ground after highway collisions.

The report says that “under extremely unlikely accident conditions,” the radiation exposure would remain well within the emergency regulatory dose limits for the public and nuclear energy workers.

Still, if the nuclear waste must be shippedthroughNiagaraandbeyond, Hodgson said it should be in a lessvolatile solid form.

“There’s a proven process to solidify this liquid soup before transport, and that’s not being done,” Hodgson said. “The plan is to ship it liquid. If you’re going to ship it, OK, but ship it in a solid form so just in case there is an accident we don’t end up with an environmental disaster.”

Gervais, however, said he doesn’t believe the facilities exist at Chalk River to convert the liquid material to solid.

Kamps said the shipments are unprecedented.

“Never before has highly radioactive liquid waste been transported in North America,” he said.

But Gervais provided information contradicting that statement, too.

Medical isotopes as well as heavy water used in CANDU reactors, for instance, are commonly transported among the more than a million packages containing radioactive material that are shipped in Canada every year, according to information on the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission website.

“That would be news to us,” Kamps said. “There may have been radioactive shipments, but never highly radioactive. And the difference between low and high radioactive waste could be many orders of magnitude. And we know these shipments are highly radioactive.”