Canada Moves Forward into the Age of Nuclear Waste . . .
Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2012 5:49 pmCanada Moves Forward into the Age of Nuclear Waste . . .
----- Original Message -----
From: Elaine Hughes
To: The Ecologist Magazine ; Sask Environmental Society ; Sask EcoNetwork ; Council of Canadians
Cc: TURMEL, Nycole - NDP ; The Current ; SK Watershed Auth. ; Sierra Club - US ; Sierra Club - Can. ; Ralph Goodale, Liberal.ca ; Rae, Bob, Liberal ; May, Elizabeth GPC ; Breitkreuz, G. MP
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012 5:43 PM
Subject: Canada Moves Forward into the Age of Nuclear Waste . . .
CNSC: public sessions on Deep Geologic Repository for Low and Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste- webcast and transcripts
QUOTE: "The Joint Review Panel invites the public to attend or observe an initial Panel orientation session where information will be provided to the Panel as it begins its work. Although the public will not have an opportunity to ask questions during the session, follow-up questions may be sent to the Panel for its consideration."
The Panel orientation session will be held:
DATE: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Location: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Public Hearing Room
14th Floor, 280 Slate Street, Ottawa, Ontario
Time: 9:00 a.m.
- - - - -
----- Original Message -----
From: Gordon Edwards
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012 10:56 AM
Subject: CNSC: public sessions on Deep Geologic Repository for Low and Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste- webcast and transcripts
Background:
The nuclear industry is now dragging society into the Age of Nuclear Waste -- a lamentable legacy of the false hopes and broken promises made during the first Atomic Age, the so-called Age of Nuclear Power.
Nuclear Power was "sold" as a clean and safe technology. But it is only clean and safe if the staggering inventory of radioactive poisons it creates can be kept completely out of the environment of living things for periods of time that dwarf the span of recorded human history.
The public was told that nuclear wastes would be safely guarded forever. But no one truly knows how to do this.
So now the industry wants to off-load these nuclear wastes by stuffing the most radioactive portions into various deep repositories, and disseminating large volumes of lower-level radioactive wastes into landfills and commercial products as a way of reducing their financial drain.
This latter practice is called "free release" of radioactively contaminated material, judged to be "below regulatory concern" -- thereby making the regulator's job easier too.
In both cases -- the repository approach and the free release approach -- the ultimate goal is not perpetual stewardship, but ultimately abandonment of radioactive wastes.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) currently stores all of the "low-level" and "intermediate-level" nuclear waste from its fleet of 22 reactors at the Western Waste Management Facility (WWMF) -- at the Bruce Nuclear Complex near Kincardine, on the shore of Lake Huron.
Now OPG wants permission to build a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) to store all this radioactive garbage underground at the same site, right next to Lake Huron, but deep down.
If the DGR were to leak its contents into Lake Huron, there would be a potential to radioactively contaminate the lakes and rivers downstream from that point.
The words "low-level" and "intermediate-level" are designed to lull people into a state of complacency. They are completely unscientific words. They have nothing to do with the longevity of the wastes or the toxicity of the wastes, they are only related to the relative ease or difficulty with which workers can handle them (from a radiological perspective).
In fact, the ONLY nuclear waste that is called "high-level" is the irradiated nuclear fuel from a nuclear reactor, whether in solid form (as fuel rods) or in liquid form (as post-reprocessing waste).
But many of the low and intermediate-level wastes contain the very same materials as those contained in the high-level waste, such as cesium-137, strontium-90, plutonium-239, iodine-129, and americium-241. Some of these materials are extraordinarily long-lived and highly radiotoxic even though they give off very little penetrating radiation and therefore pose little or no risk to the workers as long as the packaging is intact. It's when the packaging disintegrates and those materials enter into the food chain or the drinking water that their real menace is revealed.
To complicate matters further, some prominent people in the local community have requested that this area be considered as a possible repository for high-level radioactive waste in the future. And the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) -- a creature of Canada's nuclear industry -- is in charge of much of the work for the DGR, desp[ite the fact that the NWMO mandate is EXCLUSIVELY for the long-term management of high-level waste (HLW).
Opponents of the DGR think it is simply madness to store long-lived highly radiotoxic materials on the shores of the most important repository of fresh water in North America.
They also believe there is a danger that if this DGR for low-level and intermediate-level nuclear waste goes ahead, it may well evolve into a repository for all of the high-level radioactive produced by Canada's nuclear reactors -- and maybe from CANDU reactors sold abroad, and maybe even from US reactors, and -- who knows? -- radioactive garbage from all over the world.
But at this stage, the DGR has to be addressed on its own terms -- as a major milestone in the nuclear industry's plans to inaugurate the Age of Nuclear Waste as a "fait accompli".
Gordon Edwards
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR)
www.ccnr.org
= = = = = = = = =
From: "DGR Review / Examen DFGP [CEAA]" <DGR.Review@ceaa-acee.gc.ca>
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 11:49:27 AM
Subject: Reminder - Deep Geologic Repository
for Low and Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste//
Reminder: Panel Orientation Session
The Joint Review Panel invites the public to attend or observe an initial Panel orientation session where information will be provided to the Panel as it begins its work. Although the public will not have an opportunity to ask questions during the session, follow-up questions may be sent to the Panel for its consideration.
The Panel orientation session will be held in Ottawa and webcast live via the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Web site at www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca . Transcripts of the proceedings will be posted on the online Registry.
The Joint Review Panel has directed Ontario Power Generation to make a presentation at the orientation session focussed on the organization of the environmental impact statement and licence application documents submission. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will make a presentation regarding its mandate and responsibilities with respect to the project. The expert federal authorities, Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Health Canada and Natural Resources Canada, will address their departmental mandates and areas of expertise in relation to the project.
The Panel orientation session will be held:
DATE: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Location: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Public Hearing Room
14th Floor, 280 Slate Street, Ottawa, Ontario
Time: 9:00 a.m.
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
Deep Geologic Repository Project
160 Elgin St., 22nd Floor
Ottawa ON K1A 0H3
Tel.: 1-866-582-1884
Fax: 613-957-0941
Email: DGR.Review@ceaa-acee.gc.ca
----- Original Message -----
From: Elaine Hughes
To: The Ecologist Magazine ; Sask Environmental Society ; Sask EcoNetwork ; Council of Canadians
Cc: TURMEL, Nycole - NDP ; The Current ; SK Watershed Auth. ; Sierra Club - US ; Sierra Club - Can. ; Ralph Goodale, Liberal.ca ; Rae, Bob, Liberal ; May, Elizabeth GPC ; Breitkreuz, G. MP
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012 5:43 PM
Subject: Canada Moves Forward into the Age of Nuclear Waste . . .
CNSC: public sessions on Deep Geologic Repository for Low and Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste- webcast and transcripts
QUOTE: "The Joint Review Panel invites the public to attend or observe an initial Panel orientation session where information will be provided to the Panel as it begins its work. Although the public will not have an opportunity to ask questions during the session, follow-up questions may be sent to the Panel for its consideration."
The Panel orientation session will be held:
DATE: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Location: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Public Hearing Room
14th Floor, 280 Slate Street, Ottawa, Ontario
Time: 9:00 a.m.
- - - - -
----- Original Message -----
From: Gordon Edwards
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012 10:56 AM
Subject: CNSC: public sessions on Deep Geologic Repository for Low and Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste- webcast and transcripts
Background:
The nuclear industry is now dragging society into the Age of Nuclear Waste -- a lamentable legacy of the false hopes and broken promises made during the first Atomic Age, the so-called Age of Nuclear Power.
Nuclear Power was "sold" as a clean and safe technology. But it is only clean and safe if the staggering inventory of radioactive poisons it creates can be kept completely out of the environment of living things for periods of time that dwarf the span of recorded human history.
The public was told that nuclear wastes would be safely guarded forever. But no one truly knows how to do this.
So now the industry wants to off-load these nuclear wastes by stuffing the most radioactive portions into various deep repositories, and disseminating large volumes of lower-level radioactive wastes into landfills and commercial products as a way of reducing their financial drain.
This latter practice is called "free release" of radioactively contaminated material, judged to be "below regulatory concern" -- thereby making the regulator's job easier too.
In both cases -- the repository approach and the free release approach -- the ultimate goal is not perpetual stewardship, but ultimately abandonment of radioactive wastes.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) currently stores all of the "low-level" and "intermediate-level" nuclear waste from its fleet of 22 reactors at the Western Waste Management Facility (WWMF) -- at the Bruce Nuclear Complex near Kincardine, on the shore of Lake Huron.
Now OPG wants permission to build a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) to store all this radioactive garbage underground at the same site, right next to Lake Huron, but deep down.
If the DGR were to leak its contents into Lake Huron, there would be a potential to radioactively contaminate the lakes and rivers downstream from that point.
The words "low-level" and "intermediate-level" are designed to lull people into a state of complacency. They are completely unscientific words. They have nothing to do with the longevity of the wastes or the toxicity of the wastes, they are only related to the relative ease or difficulty with which workers can handle them (from a radiological perspective).
In fact, the ONLY nuclear waste that is called "high-level" is the irradiated nuclear fuel from a nuclear reactor, whether in solid form (as fuel rods) or in liquid form (as post-reprocessing waste).
But many of the low and intermediate-level wastes contain the very same materials as those contained in the high-level waste, such as cesium-137, strontium-90, plutonium-239, iodine-129, and americium-241. Some of these materials are extraordinarily long-lived and highly radiotoxic even though they give off very little penetrating radiation and therefore pose little or no risk to the workers as long as the packaging is intact. It's when the packaging disintegrates and those materials enter into the food chain or the drinking water that their real menace is revealed.
To complicate matters further, some prominent people in the local community have requested that this area be considered as a possible repository for high-level radioactive waste in the future. And the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) -- a creature of Canada's nuclear industry -- is in charge of much of the work for the DGR, desp[ite the fact that the NWMO mandate is EXCLUSIVELY for the long-term management of high-level waste (HLW).
Opponents of the DGR think it is simply madness to store long-lived highly radiotoxic materials on the shores of the most important repository of fresh water in North America.
They also believe there is a danger that if this DGR for low-level and intermediate-level nuclear waste goes ahead, it may well evolve into a repository for all of the high-level radioactive produced by Canada's nuclear reactors -- and maybe from CANDU reactors sold abroad, and maybe even from US reactors, and -- who knows? -- radioactive garbage from all over the world.
But at this stage, the DGR has to be addressed on its own terms -- as a major milestone in the nuclear industry's plans to inaugurate the Age of Nuclear Waste as a "fait accompli".
Gordon Edwards
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR)
www.ccnr.org
= = = = = = = = =
From: "DGR Review / Examen DFGP [CEAA]" <DGR.Review@ceaa-acee.gc.ca>
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 11:49:27 AM
Subject: Reminder - Deep Geologic Repository
for Low and Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste//
Reminder: Panel Orientation Session
The Joint Review Panel invites the public to attend or observe an initial Panel orientation session where information will be provided to the Panel as it begins its work. Although the public will not have an opportunity to ask questions during the session, follow-up questions may be sent to the Panel for its consideration.
The Panel orientation session will be held in Ottawa and webcast live via the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Web site at www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca . Transcripts of the proceedings will be posted on the online Registry.
The Joint Review Panel has directed Ontario Power Generation to make a presentation at the orientation session focussed on the organization of the environmental impact statement and licence application documents submission. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will make a presentation regarding its mandate and responsibilities with respect to the project. The expert federal authorities, Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Health Canada and Natural Resources Canada, will address their departmental mandates and areas of expertise in relation to the project.
The Panel orientation session will be held:
DATE: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Location: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Public Hearing Room
14th Floor, 280 Slate Street, Ottawa, Ontario
Time: 9:00 a.m.
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
Deep Geologic Repository Project
160 Elgin St., 22nd Floor
Ottawa ON K1A 0H3
Tel.: 1-866-582-1884
Fax: 613-957-0941
Email: DGR.Review@ceaa-acee.gc.ca