U.S. politicians protest nuclear waste site

Michigan lawmakers reject OPG’S assurance that contamination will not leak upward into groundwater at proposed Kincardine location

Two state politicians from Michigan came to Kincardine, Ont., Monday to protest plans for a nuclear waste storage site near Lake Huron. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) proposes to bury 200,000 cubic metres of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste in rock 680 metres below ground level near the Ontario municipality. “I have come here today to oppose this dangerous plan, to encourage you to oppose it as well, and to ask OPG to seek an alternative safer location,” state representative Sarah Roberts said in the text of a statement to a federal panel examining the proposal.

State senator Hoon-Yung Hopgood also appeared before the panel to say that “more questions have been asked than can be answered.”

“They cannot guarantee that our drinking water will remain safe and Michigan’s economy and its vast industries will not be harmed,” Hopgood said in the text of his remarks.

Officials working on the project for OPG told the panel Monday that construction and operation of the waste site is unlikely to have any significant impact on groundwater in the area.

OPG has said that contamination will not leak upward from the site into the groundwater or lakewater because of thick geological formations between the proposed waste site and the lake bed.

Roberts said she can’t accept OPG’s assurances because some of the intermediate-level waste will remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

“It is impossible for any scientist or geologist to guarantee the geological safety of the proposed location for that many years into the future, especially when one considers the fact that the Great Lakes were formed only about10,000 years ago,” she told the panel.

“There will always be unanticipated or unpredictable natural occur- rences that take place.” Roberts has introduced resolutions in the Michigan legislature opposing the proposed waste site. But Roberts said in an interview that she doesn’t know when, or if, they’ll come to a vote. They have to be heard by a committee, she said, and the committee chairman has the power to sideline any resolution. “I have been told that the chairman of that committee says he will absolutely in no way bring up these resolutions,” she said. Hopgood succeeded in having a resolution passed in the state senate, but it simply urged Canadian officials to “thoroughly review” the waste site. Monday, Hopgood noted that OPG had only investigated one site for the waste storage area. “It is a glaring and unacceptable omission that a site away from the Great Lakes was never even contemplated,” he said. Roberts said she’d like the International Joint Commission (IJC) to take an interest in the project. The commission investigates transboundary water issues between Canada and the U.S. Commission spokesman Bernard Beckhoff said Monday that the IJC has no current role in the nuclear waste project. Normally, he said the commission looks at issues that are referred to it by the governments of Canada and the U.S.