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The search for a nuclear graveyard

The search for a nuclear graveyard

The Globe and Mail 26 August 09

40,000 metric tonnes of radioactive waste is stored at sites across Canada. Anna Mehler Paperny reports on the hunt for a permanent solution

Wanted: Friendly, open-minded community in need of jobs and a whack of infrastructure cash. Must be willing to play host to nuclear waste, perhaps until the end of time.More than six decades after joining the nuclear club, Canada is home to 22 nuclear reactors, 18 of them in operation, producing about 15 per cent of the country’s electricity. Canada also has 40,000 metric tonnes of radioactive waste – and counting.

For years, the issue of how to best dispose of this waste has plagued policy-makers, scientists and citizens. Suggestions have included shooting it into outer space or exporting it to the South Pole.

Now, Canada is preparing to get rid of its nuclear detritus once and for all – by burying it.

That solution will cost $16-billion to $24-billion, and it could take until 2020 just to choose a location. But if all goes well, millions of bundles of spent nuclear fuel will be buried half a kilometre underground in a complex network of subterranean rooms forever. Or at least until future generations come up with something better to do with it.

One niggling question remains: Where?…………………..

………….ust before the meeting, Sudbury’s Liberal MPP, Rick Bartolucci, urged city council to reject the nuclear-waste repository.

“There is no dollar figure, no salary, and no number of jobs that would be worth risking the health of our children, our landscape and our future,” Mr. Bartolucci said in a statement at the time.

“We are not the dumping ground for Canada’s nuclear waste, nor do we ever want to be.”………………………

Mike Buckthought, a climate-change campaigner for the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group, said he’s skeptical of plans to store tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste underground.

“The nuclear industry has not demonstrated that it is capable of keeping highly radioactive waste isolated from the outside world for millennia,” he said. “A nuclear waste repository could be damaged by earthquakes and other natural phenomena over such a long time period.”

The inability to deal safely with the remains of nuclear power generation should be reason enough to phase it out, he said.

The search for a nuclear graveyard – The Globe and Mail

August 25, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, Canada, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium