TEN BIG REASONS WHY SASKATCHEWAN SHOULD BAN NUCLEAR WASTES

[Oscar]

TEN BIG REASONS WHY SASKATCHEWAN SHOULD BAN NUCLEAR WASTES

Background paper by Dr. Jim Harding for Council of Canadians, Quill Plains Chapter, meeting, Wynyard, SK on December 4, 2010

The Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan, a politically non-partisan network of groups working across Saskatchewan for a sustainable future, supports a legislated ban on the importation, transportation and storage of nuclear wastes anywhere in Saskatchewan. Towards this end we will hold community-information sessions along all southern and northern routes that the nuclear industry is likely to target for transporting nuclear wastes to the north.

We support a legislated nuclear waste ban for the following main reasons:

1. SASKATCHEWAN IS NOT OBLIGED TO TAKE NUCLEAR WASTES FROM AFAR:

Saskatchewan is not obliged to take back nuclear wastes created from Saskatchewan uranium. If Saskatchewan was obliged to take back such wastes we would instantly become an international nuclear dump, for uranium has been sold to many countries, including the US, France, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Finland, India, etc. They must all be responsible for their own nuclear wastes.

We aren’t obliged to take high-level radioactive waste from the US weapons program, even though Canada exported uranium in secrecy from Uranium City (and Elliot Lake, Ontario) to the US for weapons purposes through the 1950s and 1960s. Nor are we obliged to take nuclear weapons wastes from France, even though Canada sold uranium to France prior to it signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Nor are we obliged to take nuclear power wastes from Ontario, Quebec or New Brunswick because Candu reactors there have used some uranium from Saskatchewan. Uranium was also used from the Elliot Lake area in northern Ontario; and that doesn’t mean that area should become a national-international nuclear dump. Northern Ontario and Northern Saskatchewan have already paid dearly for being the mining front-end of the military-industrial nuclear system, accumulating hundreds of thousands of tonnes of toxic uranium tailings that will be radioactive for thousands of years.

Jurisdictions that decided to “go nuclear” are responsible for their own waste management, and should have had a plan from the start or not proceeded. It is too bad that Ontario’s government didn’t listen to its own Porter Commission in 1978 calling for a moratorium on nuclear power because the province had no nuclear waste plan. But better late than never: a moratorium and phase-out of nuclear power is still required so that there is not a further build-up of nuclear wastes as a curse to future generations.

2. SASKATCHEWAN DOESN’T PRODUCE NUCLEAR POWER WASTES:

Saskatchewan is the only jurisdiction targeted for a nuclear dump by the nuclear industry group, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization or NWMO, that doesn’t have any nuclear power plants. So why is the NWMO even here? The government-appointed, industry-based Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) likely hoped Saskatchewan would accept its recommendations and “go nuclear”, for then we would be committing to producing nuclear wastes. But this didn’t happen. Over 80 % of the thousands of people participating in the UDP’s public consultations in 2009 supported a non-nuclear, renewable energy policy for the province. One of the main reasons Saskatchewan people didn’t want nuclear power was because they didn’t want to create nuclear wastes. And in Dec. 2009 the Sask Party government rejected the nuclear power option along the North Saskatchewan River being promoted by Ontario-based Bruce Power because it was considered inappropriate for our needs and “too costly.”

But the UDP also recommended that the nuclear industry expand in Saskatchewan by becoming a nuclear dump. This has been the position of one UDP member, Cameco, since the 1990s. Cameco co-owns the privatized nuclear power plants operated in Ontario by Bruce Power, which is responsible for accumulating over 40 % of Canada’s total nuclear wastes, and the two companies want to find an “out of sight, out of mind” place far away from urbanized Ontario to dump their toxic, radioactive wastes. Once they claim they have “solved” their nuclear waste problem by dumping it elsewhere they hope to regain public support for a nuclear renaissance. The Coalition will not passively sit by and allow Saskatchewan to be a pawn on this corporate chess board.

3. THE NWMO IS’NT FOLLOWING THE DUTY TO CONSULT:

The Coalition supports the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People which calls for “free, prior, informed consent” for indigenous peoples being targeted by resource or industrial waste companies. Informed consent requires sufficient time to consider all relevant information, from all sides of a controversy, and not being bribed under threat of losing benefits to another community.

There is no such consent being sought by the NWMO; instead the industry is holding private meetings with Métis and First Nations groups, trying to bribe them with monetary inducements to host a nuclear dump. Environmental Committees in the north have even been used by the nuclear industry to promote a nuclear dump. The 2009 Report of the government-run North Saskatchewan Environmental Quality Committee (NSEQC)) says the NWMO made “communities aware of the opportunities to host a nuclear waste management storage site” and continues “There will be incredible economic benefits to such a community…” This manipulation bastardizes supposed environmental protection.

Nevertheless the FSIN reported on Sept. 17, 2010 that “The Secretariat has been in discussions with NWMO regarding financial assistance for capacity development, education and awareness and partnership opportunities with First Nations in Saskatchewan.” The Communiqué continues, “The (Land and Resources) Commission mandated the Secretariat to seek funding from NWMO for capacity and education.” Not surprising the industry-based NWMO responded quickly and on Nov. 17, 2010 announced it would be providing the FSIN with $1,000,000 over several years. And apparently Saskatchewan’s Métis Nation has also taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NWMO. This is a lot of money which carries the danger of creating political dependency on nuclear industry-funded jobs and is bound to influence the way Chiefs and indigenous communities are “educated” about nuclear wastes. In a Nov. 18th 2010 interview with the Star Phoenix, FSIN Vice-Chief Lyle Whitefish is reported as saying the FSIN will not be providing any other information besides that coming from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. “They provide us information and what we do is dispatch that information onto First Nations,” he said. “There are a lot of issues within our nation about nuclear waste and we try and answer, with the support of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, answer a lot of those questions First Nations people have.” Such a one-sided, neo-colonial approach will not and cannot lead to “informed consent.”

4. THE NORTH NEEDS REAL, SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC OPTIONS:

The Coalition supports environmentally-sound, effective, non-nuclear economic and social development in the north. It is largely myth that capital-intensive uranium mining can provide the magnitude of jobs and other economic opportunities required for a quickly growing northern population. Most of the earnings and profits from the privately-owned uranium industry go out of the north and out of province. Provincial uranium revenues are miniscule in comparison to those coming potash and oil and gas. The main thing trickling down from uranium mining is not economic benefits but toxic tailings that will be radioactive for thousands of years.

A recent Conference Board study found northern Saskatchewan has remained the second poorest region in all Canada even after it became the world’s main uranium-producing region. The Joint Federal-Provincial Inquiry on uranium mine expansion in the early 1990s expressed concern that the benefits of uranium mining were not being distributed among northern communities, but the industry barged on doing “business as usual.” And the industry will be gone as soon as the profitable uranium deposits run out.

Preserving and adding-value to renewable resources and embracing renewable energy will be much more effective in providing sustainable jobs and opportunities. With the million-dollar promotion of a nuclear dump as though it is a way to get economic benefits in the impoverished north, the myth, however, continues to be spread. But a deep-geological repository would be even more capital-intensive than uranium mining, with few local benefits and many short and long-term risks.

5. SASKATCHEWAN PEOPLE AS A WHOLE MUST DECIDE:

The Coalition will not accept the industry end-running the people of Saskatchewan. In addition to providing a million dollars to the FSIN to “inform” the Chiefs and First Nation communities about nuclear wastes, the NWMO has confirmed that it is already negotiating privately with two northern communities: the Métis community of Pinehouse, whose Mayor heads up the Kineepik Métis Local, and the First Nations community at English River. The industry dealing behind closed doors with one or more communities desperate for economic benefits is not the democratic way to decide whether Saskatchewan should become a nuclear dump. This is no way to make a decision with such far-reaching implications for present and future generations.

What of all the Métis and First Nations communities in the north living in common watersheds or within common Treaty areas? Will they have a voice? What of all the people of southern Saskatchewan, farming or living in the towns and cities that would be along any nuclear waste transportation route to the north? There must be a public participation process, one not run by industry bribes and handouts, that allows all people of Saskatchewan - north and south, indigenous and settler, rural and urban - to become independently and fully informed on this matter.

6. DEEP GEOLOGICAL STORAGE WAS NOT ACCEPTED BY CANADIANS

After the eight-year long federal Seaborn inquiry ended in 1998, the commissioners concluded that Canadians did not support AECL’s proposed deep geological storage of Canada’s nuclear wastes. They called for an arms-length, non-industry group to take the lead in any further consideration of nuclear wastes, which, unfortunately was not done, with the creation of the industry-based NWMO.

This promotion of deep geological burial as a public acceptance strategy of the nuclear industry has already run into serious problems. After spending $13 billion, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste burial project had to be cancelled because of underground water movement, geological fault systems and widespread indigenous and settler opposition. So the U.S. is now “back to the drawing board”, not sure what to do with an equivalent of 90,000 shipments of nuclear wastes it has now accumulated without any waste management plan. AECL’s experiments with deep geological “storage” at Lac Du Bonnet in Manitoba in the 1980s also continually ran into problems, including leaking underground caverns and radioactive material spreading through the local watershed. A leaked report showed unacceptable levels of radioactivity in the Winnipeg River, and, after provincial monitoring started, in drinking water samples.

But the industry-group, the NWMO, has come back with the same repackaged “plan”, in the hope that Saskatchewan’s sparse northern population, mostly of Métis and First Nations, will not be able to muster the same public transparency or informed opposition to becoming a nuclear waste dump that has occurred in more populous regions in Ontario and Manitoba. The hundreds of thousands or one million dollar industrial promotional “gift” is the NWMO’s insurance policy. The economic bribery being used by the industry-based NWMO is a continuation of past colonial approaches to the north. The double standard has rightly been called environmental racism.

7. NUCLEAR WASTES SHOULD BE STORED AT OR NEAR NUCLEAR PLANTS:

Transporting nuclear wastes to a dump site far from the nuclear power plants is intended to maintain illusions created by the nuclear industry. But it makes more ecological and economic sense to store nuclear wastes at or near the nuclear plants that create them. In 2005 the NWMO estimated there were 1.8 million spent fuel bundles totaling 40,000 tonnes of nuclear wastes in Canada. There are now nearly 2 million highly-radioactive spent fuel bundles, and the number will double if existing plants are allowed to operate for their projected life-span. To transport this highly radioactive nuclear waste from the nuclear plants, mostly in southern Ontario, to northern Saskatchewan would involve about 20,000 heavily armed truck or trainloads travelling in perpetuity past farms, towns and cities in northern Ontario, southern Manitoba and southern and northern Saskatchewan. Prince Albert and La Ronge would become the gateway to a nuclear dump, not to northern fishing, hunting and eco-tourism. Transportation accidents are almost certain at such a frequency. The fossil fuel and carbon footprint resulting from this would make a mockery of the nuclear industry’s claim to be “clean energy.”

Rather than bribing communities to host a nuclear dump, on site storage should be maintained, upgraded and secured. There is much to learn from the Nuclear Guardianship perspective developing in the US, which recognizes the responsibility to quickly stop the production of these deadly wastes and reduce the burden of managing the wastes for the necessary 100,000 years – many times humanity’s recorded history.

8. WE DON’T WANT SASKATCHEWAN DOING PLUTONIUM REPROCESSING:

A centralized nuclear dump is not primarily about “safe or permanent storage”; it is a Trojan Horse for future plutonium reprocessing. A 1977 report leaked from AECL’s Lac Du Bonnet research station confirmed that their underground repository was designed to retrieve spent fuel for future reprocessing, and this same plan has been carried forward by the NWMO. Ever-cheaper renewable energy technologies have already surpassed the electricity produced world-wide by nuclear power and the nuclear industry knows that it is running out of economically-recoverable uranium fuel. (More than one-half Saskatchewan’s profitable deposits are probably now mined.) The nuclear industry therefore wants to appear to have solved the nuclear waste problem, by centralizing storage of spent fuel bundles, out of sight-out of mind, while ensuring that these remain available for reprocessing to recover plutonium as an alternative nuclear fuel at a later date.

But reprocessing leaves an even more mobile high-level radioactive waste and greatly increases the dangers of weapons proliferation because of the more accessible plutonium. This is why several countries, including the U.S., ban reprocessing. Reprocessing is also extremely costly; the United Kingdom’s white elephant plant at Sellafield has been a steady drain on the taxpayer and has gone bankrupt. Meanwhile, without any seeming concern for these hard experiences elsewhere, the nuclear industry-run UDP supported nuclear wastes being brought to Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan becoming a centre for research on alternative nuclear fuels, i.e. plutonium. Some self-interested academics at the University of Saskatchewan, where the UDP Chair is also a Financial Vice President, have apparently turned a blind eye to these dangers.

9. WE NEED TO DEMOCRATIZE WASTE MANAGEMENT:

The nuclear industry long tried to justify its expansion by promising that a solution to nuclear wastes was in the works. The panacea, we are now old, will be geological disposal. But the public has become more skeptical of such a hypothetical “permanent” solution on a planet that recycles elements in perpetuity. That leaves us back at square one, and, don’t be fooled; the NWMO’s “adaptive phased management” just means “no plan.” It is understandable that the contradictions are becoming intolerable for communities living near nuclear plants. One U.S. group that bought into the false promise about geological disposal is suing the Federal government for not taking high-level wastes to Yucca. Others, more knowledgeable about the inherent limits of nuclear technology, are calling for safer storage of wastes at nuclear power plants. The Citizens Awareness Project is highlighting “the threats posed by the current vulnerable storage of commercial spent fuel”, and in March, 2010, 170 groups in 50 states released their “Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Wastes at Reactors.” It calls for lower-density storage of the extremely hot and highly radioactive spent fuel rods. It also wants hardened on-site storage (HOSS) to be able to withstand attacks, and prohibition of any reprocessing of wastes.

Originally the cooling pools at nuclear plants were only to be used temporarily. But they have now accumulated wastes well beyond their design capacity with their concentration sometimes approaching that within the reactor core. Any loss of coolant water from an accident or attack would risk a radiological fire with huge releases of radioactivity to the region. The U.S. Network therefore wants funds for state and community monitoring of these wastes.

Meanwhile, the nuclear industry that began under the cloak of military secrecy now operates commercially under the cloak of the not-so-transparent regulatory system. At a time when the public is seeing what de-regulation has done in the financial and off-shore oil-drilling sectors, the nuclear industry wants reduced environmental oversight so it can fast-track and cost-cut new plants. Meanwhile community networks are forming because the industry hasn’t dealt with the “trash” it has already created.

We can’t have any more confidence in how the nuclear industry is regulated here in Canada. It is 28 years since the U.S. began its search for a geological repository. Our federal government only approved such a course of action 8 years ago in 2002, when it passed the Nuclear Fuel Waste Act which created the industry-run Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). The NWMO now travels across Canada, seemingly concentrating on Saskatchewan, using monetary incentives to find an Indigenous community willing to “host” nuclear wastes. It is promoting the concept of geological disposal that the U.S. has pursued for nearly three decades and has now had to abandon at Yucca. Are we really smarter than our American neighbours? Or are we just slower to catch on?

10. THERE ARE ALREADY NUCLEAR WASTE BANS IN OTHER PROVINCES:

The AECL that made the Candu reactors without any plan for their nuclear wastes was the first to advocate centralized deep geological storage of nuclear wastes in Canada. After facing stiff community opposition for its drilling program in Ontario towns like Madoc and Atikokan in the 1970s, the crown corporation moved west to Lac Du Bonnet, Manitoba. In 1987, after a decade of nuclear secrecy and attempted cover-ups of failings in the deep-rock storage experiments, the Manitoba NDP government passed The High-Level Radioactive Waste Act banning the storage of nuclear wastes in that province. The AECL tried to relocate its research back in Ontario, but was rebuffed by residents at New Likard and Massey. That’s when the industry came to Saskatchewan, in 1991 trying to broker a deal with the Meadow Lake and District Chiefs to host a nuclear dump. This attempt failed due to the good work of “native grandmothers” in the community.

In 2008 Quebec passed its own legislation banning the importation of nuclear wastes. This means it recognizes it will have to take responsibility for the wastes at its own reactors, which are small in volume by Ontario standards, but will not import the bulk of Canada’s nuclear wastes, which are in southern Ontario. It is hard to imagine a bigger catalyst for a crisis in Confederation. But think of that; provinces on both sides of Ontario, where most of the wastes have been created, banning importation and/or storage of nuclear wastes! Saskatchewan seems to be the last outpost for the NWMO and its corporate funders, Bruce Power and Cameco. We are not going to take this sitting down!

Should we expect less protection from our provincial government than people in Manitoba and Quebec? Are we going to be suckers for the bribery and disinformation of the nuclear industry? At its May 28, 2010 annual conference held in Moose Jaw the United Church, the largest in the province, passed a resolution “prohibiting the transport or storage of high level nuclear waste across Saskatchewan.” And at its 2009 annual convention the Saskatchewan NDP passed policy that an NDP government will not consider “storing nuclear wastes under any circumstances.” And Opposition Leader, Lingenfelter has now publicly endorsed the party position. The Green Party has supported such a ban from its beginning. Even Sask Party Minister Boyd admits there is little grass-roots support for a nuclear dump in Saskatchewan. So isn’t It time for the Sask Party government to get on- side and support a legislated ban on nuclear wastes? The Coalition and the broad-based public that supports such a ban will be watching closely.

Member groups of the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan will begin to hold public information meetings along the Yellowhead Highway and into the north, including at communities targeted by the NWMO. We will provide comprehensive, balanced information on nuclear wastes, and the alternative to producing more of these deadly wastes or creating a nuclear dump, that has not been forthcoming from the industry-based NWMO. We will begin a campaign to win a legislated nuclear waste ban in Saskatchewan and positive, sustainable economic development options for the north. Please join us! Our children’s children are counting on us!

[Oscar]

Quill Plains Chapter hosts Dr. Jim Harding on Why Saskatchewan Needs a Ban on Nuclear Waste at Wynyard

PRESS RELEASE December 14, 2010

“Nuclear Waste: Stop Making It” was the theme of a lecture delivered by Dr. Jim Harding to the members of the Quill Plains Chapter of the Council of Canadians in Wynyard, SK on December 4, 2010.

Dr. Harding began with a brief history of the uranium industry in Saskatchewan and Canada, including the secret export of uranium from Uranium City (and Elliot Lake, ON) to the US for weapons purposes through the 1950s and 1960s. He noted that Saskatchewan is under no obligation to take back nuclear wastes from these weapons or from any other user of uranium, including nuclear power plants.

He detailed how the threat of a nuclear waste storage site at Whiteshell Experimental Station at Lac du Bonnet east of Winnipeg brought the public together and resulted in a ban against nuclear waste storage in Manitoba. Dr. Harding went on to warn that the industry-run Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) now has plans to bring High Level Nuclear Waste from Ontario nuclear power plants into a ‘willing community’ for permanent storage in northern Saskatchewan.

Two possible areas currently under consideration as a storage site are the Metis community of Pinehouse or the FSIN community of Patuanak. He noted that on November 17, 2010, the NWMO announced it would be providing the FSIN with $1,000,000 over several years for ‘capacity-building and education’, and that the Saskatchewan Métis Nation has also taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NWMO.

In reminding the group that Cameco co-owns the privatized nuclear power plants operated in Ontario by Bruce Power, he pointed out that they are responsible for accumulating over 40 % of Canada’s total nuclear wastes. In 2005, the NWMO estimated that in Canada there were 1.8 million spent fuel bundles totalling 40,000 tonnes of nuclear wastes. He added, "Currently, there are nearly 2 million highly radioactive spent fuel bundles and the our next generation will have to deal with double that number if existing plants are allowed to operate for their projected life span." “Rather than bribing communities to host a nuclear dump, on-site storage should be maintained, upgraded and secured,” Dr. Harding said.

He then pointed out that transporting this highly radioactive nuclear waste from the nuclear plants – mostly in southern Ontario – down the new ‘Plutonium Parkway’ to northern Saskatchewan, would involve about 20,000 heavily armed truck or trainloads travelling in perpetuity past farms, towns and cities in northern Ontario, southern Manitoba, and southern and northern Saskatchewan. He also stated that the fossil fuel and carbon footprint resulting from this would make a mockery of the nuclear industry’s claim to be “clean energy”, adding that "at such a frequency, transportation accidents are almost certain."

"Over and above that, no matter which community ends up taking the waste, that one community will be allowed to do an end-run on democracy, forcing the rest of those along the transportation route to face the danger from a spill," he said.

Dr. Harding concluded his talk with the recommendation that immediate steps must be taken to stop the production of these deadly wastes and reduce the burden of managing the wastes for the necessary 100,000 years – many times humanity’s recorded history – and that a moratorium and phase-out of nuclear power is required in order to avoid a further build-up of nuclear wastes as a curse to future generations.

He said that member groups of the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan will begin to hold public information meetings along the Yellowhead Highway, and into the north, including at communities targeted by the NWMO. The Coalition will also begin a campaign to win a legislated nuclear waste ban in Saskatchewan and positive, sustainable economic development options for the north. The group will provide "comprehensive, balanced information on nuclear wastes, and the alternative to producing more of these deadly wastes or creating a nuclear dump," he added. .

In closing, he encouraged others to join the campaign, stating that, “our children’s children are counting on us!”

For more information, please visit:
http://jimharding.brinkster.net

- 30 -

Contacts:
Elaine Hughes (306) 323-4938
Bill Curry (306) 554-2985

[Oscar]

Saskatchewan to become nuclear waste dumping site?

(Distributed with Editor’s permission – Dec. 21.10)
By Salome van der Merwe
Published in the Tisdale Recorder on December 8, 2010

Imagine a waste material so poisonous that if a human were to hold a handful at arm’s-length, he or she would be dead in less than five minutes.
So, if this is the fact, why would anyone even consider allowing our beloved province of Saskatchewan to become a dumping site for this highly radioactive and toxic waste material called nuclear waste?
Well, you might think this is crazy and the answer is clear-cut, but it sure is not and it has become our reality. Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), an organization seeking a location to store nuclear fuel waste, has given the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations $1 million to hold information sessions with two specific rural communities.
What makes this more frightening is the fact that both the English River First Nations as well as the Metis village of Pinehouse, the two prospective nuclear waste storage sites in Saskatchewan, have already shown interest in the project and have sat in on an initial meeting with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.
In an attempt to raise awareness of the dangers and ultimately preventing the NWMO of importing high-level radioactive waste into Saskatchewan, the Green Party has been visiting communities in Saskatchewan and enabling discussions around this very concerning issue.
On Sunday, November 28th representatives of the Green Party of Saskatchewan visited the Town of Tisdale, hosting exactly such a discussion in the Chicken Delight boardroom.
“The most recent threat is their (NWMO) plans to make Saskatchewan into the dumping ground for all the radioactive waste on the continent. The reason that we’re on the road right now is to stop the nuclear agenda that has been slated for the province of Saskatchewan,” explained Elaine Hughes, Kelvington-Wadena Green Party Prospective Candidate 2011.
“What we decided is that we’re going to start talking to communities, because most people don’t have a clue of what’s going on”.
Hughes further explained that the two main producers of nuclear waste are Bruce Power and Cameco, both companies basically provides uranium processing services which are required to produce fuel for the generation of clean electricity.
The actual process entails the fission of uranium in a nuclear reactor which splits the atoms and releases tremendous heat and radiation. This, in turn, boils water which makes steam and turns the turbines generating electricity. In a perfect world, this would have been the end of the process. But unfortunately it’s not and the bad part is that, during this process, these uranium molecules reconfigure and form 211 different chemicals, resulting in waste material that is very radioactive and toxic.
And what makes this worse, is the fact that several of these toxins retain their reactivity for thousands of years; Plutonium-239 has a “half-life” of 24 thousand years and Uranium-235 has a “half-life” of 700 million years, just to name a few.
It is therefore evident that these waste materials need to be disposed of in such a way that will avoid further combustion or explosion. To date, nuclear waste has been kept under twenty feet of water in giant swimming pools for seven years to keep it cooled down. After that, it is stored in giant cement and steel casks in large factory-like buildings for years and years.
However, the problem with this became clear when it was realized that the nuclear waste is destroying and eventually “outliving” the storage containers, resulting in the leakage of radioactive waste into the earth and its resources.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization was established in 2002 to assume responsibility for the long-term management of Canada’s used nuclear fuel; radioactive waste. One of the organization’s main projects is seeking regulatory approval for the construction of a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) in a suitable, solid rock formation to store and or dispose of nuclear waste.
The basic idea of the project is that nuclear waste will be loaded into specially designed containers and will be transported to the DGR site where it will be repackaged in corrosion-resistant containers for placement in the repository. The containers will then be placed in boreholes drilled into the rock formation and sealed with bentonite clay, a proven-effective sealing material.
Such rock formations, which form part of the Canadian Shield, are found at English River and Pinehouse, making these communities the ideal hosts for this project.
However, Hughes explained that the Green Party of Saskatchewan firmly believes that these two communities are being targeted by the nuclear industry and are only being told one-sided promotions.
“The NWMO is saying that they are looking for a willing host community, and basically the way they find that community is to put out enough money and someone will say ‘We’ll take it’,” said Hughes.
“It is viewed as being a very dishonest process; it’s a matter of playing the one community off against the other community. To these two communities the whole project is just being described as an excellent economic opportunity”.
One of the first concerns regarding the construction of a DGR in Saskatchewan is the fact that the industry estimates it would take thirty years to transport all the nuclear waste that have been accumulated so far from the reactor sites to the DGR site. And this transportation will take place on Saskatchewan roads, through Saskatchewan towns, risking the lives of Saskatchewan people, for a period of thirty years or longer.
Just think of what would happen if one of those trucks is involved in an accident while carrying highly toxic and life-threatening nuclear waste.
Hughes further explained that researchers have recently found that there is most likely a whole lot of water laying under the rock formation of the Canadian Shield , which proposes the risk of contamination of nuclear waste into the water and ultimately into the earth’s resources.
Unlike the provinces of Manitoba and Quebec, who have enacted legislated bans on the transportation of nuclear waste into their provinces, Saskatchewan currently has no laws protecting its people. However, in public consultations in 2009, the people of Saskatchewan voted resoundingly against having anything to do with the nuclear industry.
“The situation is that the government is not honouring the wishes expressed through those public consultations,” said Hughes.
For now, the only hope that Saskatchewan has of staying a radioactive waste-free province is an umbrella group called the Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan. It is a broad collection of groups and organizations from all over the province that have been challenging the NWMO and nuclear industry and putting un-biased information into the public hands.
Hughes further said that they hope to get the whole of Saskatchewan to once again speak with one voice against the importation of nuclear waste into the province which will hopefully provide the necessary pressure to force the Federal Government to get involved and take action.
On where the current power in decision lies for making Saskatchewan a nuclear waste dumping site said Hughes “To me, a critical mass of informed people is the only possibility that exists, the government will not assume responsibility for this project. This is a ridiculous situation that an organization that is industry run can make the final decision, unless there is huge public outcry”.

[Oscar]

Nuclear waste a concern for the north

http://www.nipawinjournal.com/
ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2879620&auth=Melissa%20Mangelsen/Nipawin%20Journal

Local News By Melissa Mangelsen/Nipawin Journal December 8, 2010

Penny Swartz and Sandra Finley, of the Green Party of Saskatchewan, were in Nipawin, Nov. 27, to bring awareness to the issue regarding turning northern Saskatchewan into a nuclear waste disposal site.
Leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan, Larissa Shasko, was supposed to attend as well, but something came up last minute and she was unable to be there.
Surprisingly, many people in the province are unaware that the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), which is a group created by Canada's nuclear electricity industry to find a new home for nuclear fuel waste, is looking for a place to bury high level nuclear waste in Canada and that Saskatchewan is in the crosshairs.
Two of the dumpsites they are targeting are at the Métis Village of Pinehouse and the English River First Nation.
Though Pinehouse and English River have shown interest in storing the nuclear waste, it's not something that the province has mad its mind up about yet.
The plan calls for used nuclear fuel to be put deep underground in stable rock formations. To be selected, a village or First Nation's council would have to pass a resolution saying it was interested. IT would also need a parcel of land for the site to be built on.
Finley said the threat from a nuclear dumpsite in Saskatchewan would be huge, and not just affect the communities that are habouring the waste. There is about 40,000 tons of nuclear waste that has accumulated in eastern Canada. This would require several truckloads over several decades to move the waste into Saskatchewan.
It would require about 20,000 truckloads of high-level wastes moving through our communities.
"Accidents happen, for us to believe that there will be no accidents involving these trucks that are shipping the nuclear waste is naive," said Finley.
The question remains – what would you do if there was an accident outside of your home, which began leaking nuclear waste?

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