APR.14: List of nuke waste facilities narrows . . .

[Oscar]

April 2014: Canada narrows the list of possible locations for a nuclear waste facility (DGR)


Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2014 9:04 AM
To: BREITKREUZ, G. MP - Yorkton
Cc: MULCAIR, T. NDP Leader ; MAY, E. GPC Leader ; TRUDEAU, J. LIB. Leader Trudeau ; BREITKREUZ, G. MP-Ottawa

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From: Gordon Edwards
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2014 7:36 AM
Subject: April 2014: Canada narrows the list of possible locations for a nuclear waste facility (DGR)

Background:

The situation regarding nuclear waste management in Canada is complicated by the fact that there are two very different proposals that are being pursued simultaneously. Both call for the construction of a Deep Geological Repository (DGR), and both involve the same industry-based organization (NWMO = Nuclear Waste Management Organization) -- but there the similarity ends.

The article below is a blast from the past -- April 2014. It refers to the larger and more long-standing project, having to do with the long-term management of high-level radioactive waste (irradiated fuel). The inventory of irradiated nuclear fuel waste in this country has been growing ever since Canada's first research reactors were started up in the 1940's. The problem was greatly exacerbated when Ontario's fleet of nuclear power reactors started coming on-line in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But it wasn't until 1977 that the Canadian government officially acknowledged the problem of guarding this high radio-toxic material for the hundreds of thousands or rather millions of years necessary. In that year a government report was written by three men in three months called "The Management of Canada's Nuclear Wastes" in which the authors recommended a DGR for irradiated nuclear fuel, preferably in a granite pluton. [Pluton is a geological term.]

The early history of this first DGR proposal (let's call it DGR-1) designed for high-level radwaste is summarized by me here: http://ccnr.org/hlw_history.html .

This text only covers the period up to 1986. In 1988 an Environmental Assessment Panel (called the Seaborn Panel) was given the job of evaluating the safety and the acceptability of a high-level DGR as proposed by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL).

The panel concluded, ten years later, after wide-ranging public hearing in five provinces, that, although the DGR-1 proposal was not to be rejected, it was not considered acceptable by the Canadian public and was not proven to be safe from a "social" point of view although it appeared to be reasonably safe from a "technical" point of view (i.e. using normal engineering criteria for this extraordinary project).

A whole chapter of the Panel's Report (Chapter 5) was devoted to the "social" aspect of safety -- a concept that goes far beyond the usual engineering considerations.

See http://www.ccnr.org/hlw_fearo_summary.html .

The Government disregarded the most important unanimous recommendation of the Panel, which was to create an INDEPENDENT nuclear fuel waste management agency, at arm's length from both government and industry, with a Board of Directors made up of various stakeholders . Instead, the Government created an industry-owned and industry-run Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) whose Board Members were representatives of the utilities that produce the nuclear waste. The fox is in the henhouse.

My critique of NWMO is found at http://ccnr.org/follow_path_back.pdf .

Now the NWMO is searching for a "willing host community", wining and dining the town councillors, meeting with them behind closed doors, and bribing them with $400 thousand whether they accept the waste or not, as long as they stay in the selection process long enough before dropping out. This corrupting procedure is causing great distress in several of the candidate communities and is creating terrible divisions in the population that will be very difficult to heal.

Meanwhile, the Mayor of Kincardine -- a small town near the Bruce Nuclear Complex on the shore of Lake Huron -- has asked Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to consider building ANOTHER DGR (let's call it DGR-2) to bury all the LOW-level nuclear waste from Ontario's 20 nuclear power reactors in an excavated repository near Kincardine.

It is important to understand the context. The Bruce Nuclear Complex is the largest nuclear facility in North America, perhaps even the largest in the world. There are eight operating nuclear power reactors on this one site, as well as the Western Waste Management Facility that accepts all of the low-level and intermediate-level nuclear wastes from ALL of OPG's reactors -- not just the 8 at Bruce, but also the 8 at Pickering and the 4 at Darlington.

These low-level and intermediate-level wastes are stored in surface and shallow sub-surface containers on the Bruce site. The Mayor of Kincardine was basically asking, if a DGR is a good idea for high-level waste, then why not also for other nuclear wastes? Meanwhile his community would get the jobs and the economic stimulation from a major project in his own back yard.

My critique of DGR-2, which applies equally well to DGR-1, is based on the idea that ABANDONING nuclear waste that will remain dangerously radio toxic for hundreds of thousands of years, is unjustified scientifically as well as ethically. Instead, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responbsibility is proposing a strategy of "Rolling Stewardship" until a genuine solution to the nuclear waste problem can be developed and proven to be absolutely safe.

See http://ccnr.org/DGR_GE_Transcript.pdf as well as http://www.ccnr.org/CCNR_Undertaking_final.pdf and http://www.ccnr.org/CCNR_NRC_2013.pdf

The fate of DGR-2 has obvious implications for DGR-1, so much so that a lot of the technical assessment for DGR-2 has actually been carried out by NWMO, whose mandate is SOLELY for the high-level waste. Evidently the nuclear industry (embodied in NWMO) feels that if it can get a green light for DGR-2, it will make the DGR-1 struggle a lot easier for them to "win".

Originally OPG stated that they would only put low-level wastes, and intermediate-level wastes with short half-lives (so that decay to innocuous levels would take place within a couple of centuries) into the facility that I have been calling DGR-2. However, when they saw that the project had a good chance of being approved, and with the blessing of the local Mayor and town council, they decided to throw caution to the winds and put ALL the nuclear wastes into DGR-2, a decision which extends the hazardous lifetime from a couple of centuries to more than a million years.

OPG is even considering putting the DECOMMISIONING wastes into DGR-2 -- that is, the thousands of truckloads of radioactive rubble from the demolition of the radioactive structures of the reactors after final shutdown. Some of these wastes are FAR more dangerously radioactive than those wastes which were originally slated to be accommodated in DGR-2. A veteran of the nuclear industry, Dr. Frank Greening, has provided documentation to show that OPG has UNDERESTIMATED the radioactive inventory for DGR-2 by a very large factor, in the order of 10,000 times!!

It is important to realize that the Canadian nuclear establishment -- with the total backing of the Government of Canada, who created Canada's nuclear industry and who has spent tens of billions of taxpayer's dollars in promoting this industry at home and abroad -- is playing a dangerous game that is INTENTIONALLY confusing. When one hears about "the DGR" one literally does not know what is being talking about, since the same term is used for two quite different proposals, even though there is a lot of overlap -- both technically and politically.

Gordon Edwards, President
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
www.ccnr.org

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Canada narrows list of possible locations for nuclear waste facility [i.e. DGR-1]

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canad ... -1.2604160 ]

7 of 22 municipalities dropped from list of potential sites

By Rick MacInnes-Rae, CBC News, Apr 09, 2014

Canada is a step closer to picking a place to store spent nuclear fuel underground for the next 100,000 years, a project that's backfired on some of the world's other nuclear economies.

Despite the stigma of radioactivity, 22 Canadian municipalities expressed interest in hosting such a facility. Four have now been moved up the list for further evaluation, while seven have been rejected as not suitable. The other 11 are still in the initial assessment phase.

Final approval could take another couple of decades, but if a site is found and approval given to build a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR), the project will generate thousands of jobs, some lasting generations.

Billions would be spent constructing a vast warehouse over 500 metres underground to contain some of the most radioactive waste in the world.

Deadly byproduct

Nuclear energy has helped meet Canada's electricity needs for more than 40 years, but a deadly byproduct has been steadily building up as a result.

There's a growing inventory of spent uranium pellets. The radioactive pellets are stored inside long tubes bundled together like 24-kilogram logs.

Heading the search for a secure place to store those tubes is the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation (NWMO), funded by Canada's four nuclear agencies, which describes the situation this way: "If Canada's entire current inventory of just over two million used fuel bundles could be stacked end-to-end, like cordwood, it would fit into six NHL-sized hockey rinks from the ice surface to the top of the boards."

At present, spent fuel is stored at seven different sites across Canada, including at the reactors it once powered. But that’s not a long-term solution, because in time those reactors will be decommissioned and dismantled.

In its quest for a site, the NWMO took the novel step of asking Canadian communities if they'd think about hosting the highly-radioactive payload.

"Well, we didn't know what to expect" said Jo-Ann Facella, director of social research and dialogue at the NWMO.

"We put out the plan that Canadians had come forward with and the government had selected as Canada's plan. And an important part of that plan, it emerged from Canadians, is that these facilities only be implemented in a willing host [community]."

What also came back were expressions of interest from 22 different municipalities, tempted in part by the promise of employment if they’re chosen. Some were also drawn by the fact that for taking part in the selection process, they'll get $400,000 even if they're not chosen, providing they advance far enough in the process and a DGR is ultimately approved.

All those on the list are from Ontario and Saskatchewan, none from the nuclear-power provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec. (Ontario already hosts the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, where a proposal to construct another DGR on-site for low-to-intermediate level nuclear waste is far more advanced.)

Among the first communities to move up the list is Creighton, Sask.-- population 1,500 -- where every Monday is Bingo Night, but the town has never won the jackpot of jobs, says Mayor Bruce Fidler.

"We've been looking at different things throughout a number of years to attract more business, more industry to the area. So that's why we are learning more about this process."

Creighton is the only Saskatchewan site left on the list. But southern Ontario sits on just the right kind of rock, a thick plate of limestone delightfully named the Ordovician Cobourg Formation. Water contamination and seismic activity is not thought to be an issue for a facility built in that kind of rock, though 24 American reactor operators "cannot show that their reactors would withstand the most severe earthquake that revised estimates say they might face," according to the New York Times this week.

Three Ontario towns with promising geology are moving to the next level of evaluation for a DGR; Hornepayne, Ignace and Schreiber.

Eleven other Ontario sites are still in the early stages of assessment; Blind River, Brockton, Central Huron, Elliot Lake, Huron-Kinloss, Manitouwadge, Nipigon, North Shore, South Bruce, Spanish, and White River.

Seven sites have been turned down because their geology’s not right, or they lack the 250 acres of land above ground for ventilation buildings. They include English River First Nation, and Pinehouse in Saskatchewan. And in Ontario, Arran-Elderslie, Ear Falls, SaugeenShores, Wawa, and the Township of Red Rock.

MORE:

[ [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/canad ... -1.2604160 ]

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[ http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/nu ... te-canada/ ]

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[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-b ... -1.2594065 ]

Bruce Hyer pushes nuclear waste group for more consultation
[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-b ... -1.2581562 ]

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[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/w ... -1.2437096 ]

[Oscar]

Nuclear Waste Decisions Loom

[ http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/01 ... loom.html# ]

[ http://tinyurl.com/nc74aqo ]

Questions about two proposed nuclear waste sites continue to provoke controversy.

John Spears, Business reporter, Toronto Star, Mon Jan 06 2014

More than half a century after miners started gouging uranium out of the Canadian Shield at Elliot Lake, William Elliott wants it back.

He’s leading the campaign by the town and surrounding communities to become the place where the used fuel from Canada’s nuclear reactors is stored forever.

But the long-running saga of finding a spot for Canada’s nuclear waste still has years more to run as those who want the waste — and those who don’t — struggle over what to do with it.

And the question gets even more vexed as a decision nears on a second radioactive waste site for less potent — but still hazardous — nuclear waste that Ontario Power Generation wants to develop at its Bruce nuclear site near Kincardine, Ont.

Decisions about nuclear waste, which have simmered for decades, are starting to heat up, as two processes move forward.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, responsible for finding a home for used fuel from nuclear reactors, has started trimming the list of applicants from its roster, dropping four communities and leaving 17 in the running.

A federal panel is due to make a decision this year on whether to give the go-ahead to OPG’s proposed waste site at the Bruce.

The double process, for two different waste sites, has sown confusion in the Kincardine area, where the town solidly backs OPG’s proposal, but has made it clear it has no interest in the used fuel waste site.

But a number of Kincardine’s neighbours have said they do want the used fuel site, leading to speculation that the two projects could still somehow become one.

That simply isn’t going to happen, vows Mike Krizanc of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO).

“It’s been the challenge for us to address that and distinguish them,” he acknowledges.

But he says the two sites can’t possibly be combined.

“The two are technically different,” Krizanc insists.

OPG proposes to store its waste in a series of huge, horizontal underground caverns.

The used fuel that is the responsibility of the NWMO < http://www.nwmo.ca/ > will be placed in radiation-proof steel and copper containers and deposited in vertical boreholes drilled deep into bedrock.

Any open spaces left when the containers are deposited will be packed with bentonite clay, a material that is a solid barrier to water flow, should radiation somehow leak from the containers into groundwater.

Technical issues aside, a key component in deciding where the used fuel depository should go remains finding a community that is happy to have it.

On that score, Elliott, who heads the Elliot Lake-area business development corporation, thinks his community’s bid comes in as a strong contender.

“It came out of the ground here, it was refined down the highway,” Elliott says simply.

“Nobody here thinks poorly of the nuclear industry at all.”

MORE:

[ http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/01 ... loom.html# ]