Category Archives: Energy

80 Groups Urge Canada: Reject Great Lakes Nuke Dump!

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CACC is proud to have signed this letter. We are dedicated to stopping nuclear power at every turn. The following was written by Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Watchdog for Beyond Nuclear. 

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and Washington, D.C. – Outlining the legal grounds for the Canadian federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna to reject Ontario Power Generation’s bid to bury radioactive wastes right beside Lake Huron, 80 public interest groups from Canada and the US have issued a joint letter as pressure mounts on McKenna to make the right call. McKenna is due to issue her decision on or before March 1, 2016.

Thanking McKenna for responding positively to the joint letter sent by NuclearWaste Watch in November by extending the timeline for issuing a decision statement on Ontario Power Generation’s proposal to bury up to half a million cubic metres of radioactive wastes beside Lake Huron, the February 8th correspondence restates that the Joint Review Panel (JRP) recommendation that Ontario Power Generation’s proposed Deep Geologic Repository for Low and Intermediate Level Radioactive Wastes be allowed to move to licensing was in error, and sets out several examples of how Ontario Power Generation failed to meet the requirements of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA 2012), the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Guidelines, and the JRP Agreement, which are the three legal requirements.

Ontario Power Generation’s proposal was to bury 200,000 cubic metres of low and intermediate level radioactive wastes produced during reactor operations deep underground in a series of underground caverns carved out of limestone. Weeks before the federal hearing began in September 2013, OPG publicly acknowledged its intention to double that amount by adding decommissioning wastes – including radioactive reactor components and contaminated building materials and rubble – through a license amendment after approval based on the initial proposal has been issued.

The proposal faces large and growing public opposition. 184 municipalitiesrepresenting more than 22 million people have passed resolutions opposing OPG’sproposed waste repository. On November 5, 2015, a bipartisan group of six U.S. Senators and 26 U.S. Representatives from a number of Great Lakes states wrote to Prime Minister Trudeau urging him to block the deep geological repository.

“Momentum continues to build against this burial scheme,” said Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist with Takoma Park, Maryland, U.S.A.-based organization Beyond Nuclear, a national and international watchdog on the nuclear power industry.

“McKenna made a good call in November, extending the deadline for the decision statement on the Joint Panel Report, which allowed her and her staff more time to get to know this file,” commented Brennain Lloyd, a spokesperson with Northwatch.

“Now comes the bigger test: rejecting Ontario Power Generation’s nuclear waste burial scheme.”

The Feb. 8th letter to Canadian Environment Minister McKenna is posted online HERE

Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump!

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Nuclear waste burial site proposed at the Bruce Power Station in Ontario, on the shore of Lake Huron 

STOP THE MADNESS! 

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The proposed nuclear waste deep-burial site would be less than 3/4th of a mile from the shore of Lake Huron.
The Bruce Power Station is the largest nuclear power facility in the world
The Bruce Power Station is the largest nuclear power facility in the world

For details on this issue see:
this media release from Beyond Nuclear

Watch this video to get a sense of the enormity of the Bruce site

Liquid Nuclear Waste on America’s Highways?

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liquid uranium
Liquid Nuclear Waste – Photo by NRC

“Highly Enriched Uranyl Nitrate Liquids” (HEUNL) Liquid Nuclear Waste
It’s pretty much exactly what you think it is.

It’s a lot like solid nuclear waste, only it’s liquid.
It’s runny. It spills, it flows, it soaks into things, and it’s radioactive.  It glows in the dark.

HEUNL is so hazardous that it has never been transported in North America.
Not by train, plane or automobile. Solid radioactive material, which has been transported in North America, is dangerous enough, liquid radioactive material is even more dangerous.

There is no permanent disposal location for HEUNL, and those who create liquid nuclear waste are responsible for storing it on-site until a permanent disposal location is constructed.

Never, never-ever, not once anywhere in North America has anyone considered moving HEUNL from one temporary facility to another… until now.

A plan is in the works to move over 23,000 liters (6,075 US Gallons) of HEUNL from the Chalk River Site in Eastern Ontario
to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina,
another temporary holding site.

map
map by USGS – graphic by CACC
We’re talking about multiple trucks, carrying around 200 liters each of weapons grade liquid-uranium, traveling over 1,100 miles of public roadway, crossing countless waterways including the St. Lawrence River, and passing numerous cities, not least of which would be Washington DC.

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It’s a long way from Ontario to South Carolina, and three major obstacles stand in the way: the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Watershed, the Appalachian Mountain Range, and some of the largest population centers on the face of the planet. If the HEUNL transport operation is forced by Eastern states to take a more Westerly route, the convoys will travel through Michigan, possibly even across the Mackinac Bridge.

MapofEmergingUSMegaregions
This map, created by the Regional Plan Association, illustrates eleven population centers that are growing into megaregions

Even if an accident does not occur, the areas along the shipping routes will be exposed to low levels of ionizing radiation.

 

But why transport liquid nuclear waste?

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The material is included in a nonproliferation effort aimed at recovering U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium distributed to research facilities in other countries.

The Department of Energy said a contract has been signed in which Canada will pay $60 million over four years for Savannah River Site to receive and process the liquid.

Tom Clements, the South­eastern nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth, said the Canada project is more about bringing money to SRS than safeguarding bomb-grade materials.

“A decision by the U.S. Department of Energy to import 23,000 liters of liquid high-level waste from Canada is being presented as a nonproliferation effort, but in reality it is a waste-management issue in Canada and a monetary issue at the Savannah River Site,” Clements said, adding that Canada “is dumping their problem on SRS.”

Processing the Canadian material will generate even more radioactive waste at Savannah River!

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temporary storage – Photo by NRC

Estimates indicate that the Canadian waste, when processed, would create about 1.5 million gallons of low-level waste that would be disposed of in the site’s Saltstone Facility, and enough high-level waste to fill an additional 24 steel canisters produced by the site’s Defense Waste Processing Facility.

Those quantities only amount to about one additional month of operation for the Defense Waste Processing Facility and two months for the Saltstone Facility.

Liquid Nuclear Waste on America’s Highways…

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Any attempt to reroute the shipments away from populated areas would put the trucks on even more dangerous terrain. Such an attempt would be irrelevant in light of the fact that sparsely populated areas in the Eastern US are upstream from densely populated areas.

Highway accidents are sadly a common occurrence. CACC will continue to discourage the shipment of HEUNL Liquid Nuclear Waste. If these initial shipments go forward, it sets a dangerous precedent: that we may see these radioactive trucks pass us by again, and again… until something goes wrong.

 

For more information visit:

Radioactive Roads

Sierra Club Canada