Adamson: EDITORS NEGLECT THEIR HOMEWORK

[Oscar]

EDITORS NEGLECT THEIR HOMEWORK

(Article submitted to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on June 25, 2007)

When the editors write about uranium and nuclear wastes (SP June 18, 2007, p.A8) they use generalizations and half-truths over and over again like a mantra—which they have received from the uranium industry. They have not done their homework, or they might have changed their tune.

“The Canadian Shield. . . It’s where the rocks have stored vast quantities of radioactive material for hundreds of millions of years.” But the encapsulating and storing was quite different from grinding it into a fine powder, thereby releasing all the radioactivity in it.

“This province is home to some of the best minds in the world where it comes to geology of the Canadian Shield.” The editors neglect to mention that geologists like P. Fritz and S.K. Frappe (1987) have discovered that there is salt water, under extreme pressure, underlying the rock of the Canadian Shield, and that it is not a suitable place for storing high-level nuclear waste. The deep rock gold mines across Canada, and the experimental deep rock shaft at Pinawa, Manitoba, have all been plagued by water infiltration. Not as dry and hard at it is made out to be!

Elizabeth Dowdesville, former President of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, has written (Oct. 14/05): “The characteristics of crystalline rock formations in the Canadian Shield have been extensively studied, it is well documented that through the Canadian Shield groundwater saturates the rocks and sediment to the very near surface.” Yet the myth persists!

“But hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on science, which determined disposal in places such as Saskatchewan is safe.” The editors neglect to mention that the Seaborne Commission, after millions of dollars and eight years of consultations across Canada determined that the AECL plan was not acceptable. The editors did not mention that the Scientific Review Panel found some 90 items that needed to be addressed before proceeding. After three years of review, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization provided no new discoveries or additions to the AECL plan, but merely strung the same plan out into “adaptive phases´ over 300 years at the cost of $20 billion dollars. Not such great science here!

“Although the reactor accident at Chernobyl was terrible…” and then the editors begin to downplay it with an inappropriate analogy. Then they become condescending toward the poor dumb Russian scientists, as the industry has done for several decades now—“And Chernobyl was a Soviet-built plant that lacked safety features common to other reactor sites.”

The Chernobyl plant included safety features, but a design flaw led to a carbon-core fire which had not been expected, and it caught the operators by surprise, so that they made some mistakes, and the whole thing blew up with a disastrous explosion and spread of radiation. If the editors had taken the time and energy to look at the website on the internet, and read the many detailed accounts by Der Spiegel, they would not dismiss it so blithely. They did not do their homework.

The editors did not mention the American scientists and the disastrous melt-down at the Three Mile Island reactor, with a serious spread of radiation over the animals, people, and vegetation of that region. This event has also been chronicled in some detail. The editors did not mention the two radioactive accidents at our Canadian Chalk River experimental reactors (1952 & 1958) where 191 service men were sent in to clear up the mess, and were exposed to very dangerous levels of radiation.

Hopefully, in the future, the editors will do more careful research before they publish generalized and misleading statements about uranium and nuclear wastes.

Bill Adamson,
805 Acadia Dr.,
Saskatoon, SK S7H 3W2
(306) 374-1417