Transport concerns, long-term impacts, limited benefits to community

I am writing in opposition to this project on three grounds: 1) risks associated with transport of waste materials through the region; 2) concern about the long-term impact of the waste; 3) limited benefits to the community. 

Regarding the above

1) The stretch of road leading to Ignace (the storage facility site) is notorious for nearly daily closures due to collisions. In the past I have commuted along this highway for work and have driven on it several times for personal reasons. Nearly every time I travel on this road, there has been evidence of transport truck rollovers. In most cases the vehicles are completely destroyed, with their contents spread all over the ditch or burned beyond recognition. I follow road updates on this highway and fatalities involving transport trucks are frequent. In many places, this road runs alongside steep rock faces and precipitous drops into the lake below, which is sometimes hundreds of feet down. Even with extensive safeguards in place that make the carrier nearly indestructible, I do not feel comfortable with the idea that the most persistent and toxic pollutant on Earth being carried along this dangerous stretch of road even once, let alone multiple times a day every day. Not to mention the widespread implications of radioactive waste entering the Lake Superior watershed. I feel that it is a disaster waiting to happen. While I have faith in the safety of the transport vehicles due to a prior experience of having a nuclear fuel transport roll over in a community that I used to live in and the protocols that were put in place to ensure citizen safety, that event happened in Saskatchewan, where the roads are more open and the areas surrounding the roads seem less likely to result in excessive damage to the vehicles. 

2) I believe the nuclear industry in Canada should follow the model that France has pursued involving deep recycling of nuclear waste in order to reduce its volume. This could be coupled with designing storage sites closer to the reactors where the fuel is being used rather than shipping it thousands of kilometers. While this process is costly, I would prefer this as a long-term part of the use of nuclear power, which I believe is one of the essential elements of the future electricity grid. The dumping of radioactive waste that still has potential energy in it seems incredibly short-sighted and wasteful to me. The radioactive waste that the industry intends to dump in Ignace could serve future power needs and there is no good reason aside from short-term economics that the fuel potential is not being maximized. With nuclear waster being such a long-term problem, long-term holistic thinking that goes beyond blindered short-term cost/benefit analyses should be embraced.

3) Finally, it has come to my attention that there is no guarantee that the staff who will operate the storage facility would be drawn from the local population of Ignace, with it being heavily implied that workers from outside the region would not relocate permanently to the community but would travel there for work. This is unacceptable to me. If a facility like this is to exist, with all the risks to the community that are involved, there should be no option for workers to not live in the community. In my mind, people who do not live in the place will care less about that place and will see that place solely as a source of economic benefit to themselves and their family. Care and attention to their work will be less because the consequences of their actions will be less - they can just leave if anything goes wrong without the emotional burden of having land that generations of their ancestors lived on be destroyed or made uninhabitable. Having out-of-region workers also seriously diminishes the economic argument (which should not really be an argument for this kind of site anyway in my opinion) since large, long-term boons to the local community, such as workers buying houses that are intended to serve as intergenerational connecitons to the community, sending their kids to local schools, using the local hospital and retirement facilities, etc. will not the be priority for these workers.

Overall, my commentary reflects my position that not enough thought has gone into the decision to locate the waste facility in Ignace. The industry needs to prioritize looking past short term economics and put their focus on maximizing the efficiency of the use of fuel and minimizing the beyond-human-lifespan impacts of the industry.