The NWMO needs to go back to the drawing board and find a safer long term solution to our high level nuclear waste problem

Many thanks to everyone who is concerned about nuclear waste and is working on this most difficult and pernicious problem. Nuclear contamination from uranium mining, atomic weapons and nuclear reactors have been increasingly plaguing our world for more than three quarters of a century. Ever since people began to exploit uranium which was buried deep underground, where First Nation’s tradition tells us it should remain forever. Unfortunately their Elder’s Wisdom has been disregarded and we are now faced with ever increasing quantities and kinds of deadly radioactive material in our water, air, land and in containers of nuclear waste from power reactors. These storage containers need to be kept in rolling stewardship, where they can be monitored and repackaged as needed and where successive generations know it is their responsibility to keep these harmful bundles of high level radioactive waste from poisoning us or this beautiful planet we call home.

There have been various attempts over the decades to deal with this post reactor waste. One very sad one happened some decades ago when the industry decided to fill metal barrels with radioactive waste and dump them off the shores of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, on the north eastern coast of North America. Luckily, enough people objected to this hare-brained scheme that it didn’t occur. Most unfortunately, the barrels were quite quickly dumped off the coast of Florida before anyone could stop them and today the images of those almost completely rusted out barrels haunt my memory.

We are now faced with unproven, speculative ideas and approaches as to how to store this deadly radioactive material. But will they work? Or will they just be burying the nuclear waste out of sight and mind for future generations to be plagued with? When they realize that their waterways are being contaminated with radioactive waste that has made its way out of the DGR and into the earth and water?

How long will these containers and the DGR last? To give this a little context we need to realize that some of the oldest pyramids in Egypt are believed to be have been built in 2630 BCE, which is less than 5000 years ago. Agriculture is believed to have begun 10,000 years ago. Plutonium 239 found in used nuclear fuel is said to have a half life of 24,100 years. And that is just its half life. It will continue to be radioactive for millenia longer than that.

Just how is the NWMO going to build something that can keep the land, water, air, plants and animals, not to mention people, safe for that many years? So, for the NWMO to talk about keeping the waste safe for “generations to come” as this document proposes, is worse than meaningless it is dishonest and absurd. These elements will continue to be dangerous and radioactive for deca-millennia, not generations or centuries.

In addition to the almost impossible feat that the NWMO is proposing to accomplish in the construction of this DGR and the storage of these deadly radioactive materials in perpetuity, I find it most troubling and disturbing that in the present NWMO documents they have removed the critical issue from discussion that was previously included. Namely, transporting these deadly fuel rods to the underground chambers they are proposing to build. Think of all the land and communities that the trucks filled with these deadly poisons will have to travel year round, including while the roads are covered in ice and snow. Northern trucking accidents happen relatively frequently, only now the cargo will contain high level radioactive waste.

So why, I must ask, is transportation, a principle aspect of this project not included in the current assessment? How can one have a DGR in Northern Ontario, far from the nuclear reactors in southern Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick without discussing first and foremost how this deadly radioactive waste will get to Northern Ontario?

The NWMO needs to go back to the drawing board and find a safer more logical solution to the monster that the nuclear industry and its proponents have created over the last half century. And that they are now very interested in pushing on the public, hoping they can fool people into thinking that nuclear power is clean and green.

The fact is there is nothing clean or green about nuclear power. During normal operations nuclear reactors release radioactive fission and activation products into our air and water, and onto the land. These routine emissions are acknowledged by medical science as carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens. And when accidents occur, and they will occur, the quantities of radioactive contamination released will be increased exponentially. 

But it is primarily the everyday reactor emissions that need to concern us the most, as well as man's inability to safely keep their radioactive waste products out of the ecosystem for the incredible length of time they will remain toxic and deadly.

How can people build anything that will remain an effective barrier for deca-millennia?