potential NWMO repository

M. Rafter

<Personal information removed>

 

Dear Panel Members,

I am writing to express my opposition to the proposed abandonment of nuclear waste in Northwestern Ontario. I am hoping you will oppose this as well.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has been searching for a burial location for all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste since 2010, and they have now come down to just two candidate sites, including one 42 km west of Ignace, Ontario (between Ignace and Dryden).

The NWMO is a group of nuclear power companies, with a stake in continued nuclear power production. “Solutions” they propose for the resulting deadly waste must be seen in this light.
 

Their plan is to ship all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste to one location and bury it.  An estimated 100,000 tonnes of highly radioactive fuel waste from nuclear reactors in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick could be trucked thousands of kilometres to the site, repackaged (with associated risks), and then placed underground. Transportation would be daily for forty years.

The repackaging containers will not outlive the waste being contained..plutonium life is 290000 years.

 

According to the NWMO, the local community will have to consent to the project - but there is a fundamental problem with this: the NWMO has still not said how “consent” will be measured. Many expect that there will be a referendum, but the NWMO has not committed to this, and they may proceed with something as simple (for them) as a local council resolution or a local telephone poll – ignoring all the other stakeholders along the transportation route, and in the affected watersheds.

 

There has never been an operating deep geological repository for high-level nuclear fuel waste anywhere in the world. Thus, the proposed repository is experimental. Experts tell us that the materials of the casks, and the underground chamber itself, cannot possibly last for the hundreds of thousands of years this waste will remain dangerous. The stakes are far too high to expose the pristine environment of Northwestern Ontario, its watersheds which reach to Hudson Bay, and are just north of the Great Lakes  and its residents to such an experiment.

I query the sanity of parking a nuclear waste repository in the middle of a freshwater chain of lakes, rivers and streams that share watershed from Great Bear Lake, to Great Slave Lake , through Lake Athabasca, Lake Winnipeg to the burial location -Ignace / Dryden,  and on through to Hudson Bay or to the Great Lakes. The potential impacts to the burial site from the northern watershed due to climate change and geological change are unknown. Any changes that impact the burial site will impact the ongoing watershed and should be concerning to say the least.

Canadians have, in the past, made changes to northern watersheds (Red River) and we know how those manmade changes have impacted areas in Manitoba and Northern Ontario annually. We should view natural and climate changes similar to manmade changes...we just don’t know.  

The NWMO has taken transportation concerns off the table for comment and discussion...that is ludicrous!  They are proposing daily transportation for 40 years by rail or highway.  The first biggest risk is transport and the second big risk is storage disturbance. What are they avoiding or hiding?

How am I being protected?

 

Why is it not safer to bury this waste where it currently lives and thereby reduce the risk of transport and decrease the area of devastation should leakage occur?

 

I would like to know how other countries in the world handle their high-level nuclear waste.

The plan should be that the NWMO champions a best practice.

As a designated project, should there not be assessment for impact and risk as this has never been done before? Should the assessment and risk not be made public knowledge through education and communication with all the stakeholders that ever could be potentially impacted made aware? Alternatively, leave it where it is and beef up the security, safety and structure if it is okay to be around.

I would like to suggest that nuclear usage should be greatly reduced and preferably abandoned.

The use of nuclear comes with very high risk, it is very expensive to utilize and more expensive to deal with the waste. There are better and safer ways to generate energy and those technologies should be expanded upon and more heavily relied on.

 

All of us must learn about this plan from unbiased, reliable sources, educate ourselves about the risks, and speak up. There should be no fast tracking of this project, I urge you to inform yourself on the proposed nuclear waste abandonment, and oppose it on behalf of your concerned constituents.